Abs Calamitas
by Darkwood
Summary: Exodus begins during the end of Episode 26 of the WHR anime and shows us how the various members of the STNJ manage to escape the destruction of the Factory, and continues on to explain what happens to Amon and Robin.
1. Exodus 0:1

Series Title: Abs Calamitas

Exodus 0:1 - Salvation

Anime: Witch Hunter Robin

Rating: PG-13 (for death references?)

A/N: _"Exodus" begins during the last episode. The quote in italics at the end is from a fansubbed version of the show, which I cross-referenced against the Dub translation as Best Buy thwarted my attempts to buy the series for myself. -shakes fist at corporations- If anyone would like to correct my Latin on the title, please feel free to do so. Comments and questions are always appreciated. Please enjoy._

* * *

"This way!" Karasuma shouted, leading the way down the hall. During her time spent under Zaizen's watchful eyes, she had been paying attention to the layout of the facility, both below ground and above it. She thanked her training, as she ran down the smooth metal corridor, for that sort of attentiveness, and in thanking her training, she silently thanked Amon. "There's an access panel in the wall that leads into the external ventilation system. If we can make it there before the complex is sealed up tight we'll be ok!" 

Robin stared at the 'plant' door for a long moment, tears welling in her eyes.

"Robin," Amon said. He felt the pain of his wound, but forced it to the back of his mind, his thoughts training themselves on survival above all else. His training at Solomon headquarters took over, both the recent refresher course and the more in-depth lessons of long ago.

She turned sad, crystal green eyes on him. Always the dutiful watchdog. She nodded once, closing her eyes, and ignited the entire room and the trapped souls within.

The two of them started running, Karasuma a few feet ahead. Miho reached the panel in question and lifted her gun, shooting it without hesitation. The screws broke, even with the Orbo bullets instead of real shells, but the thick grate covering the shaft didn't budge. Karasuma reached up to press her hands against ventilation shaft, her heart racing. She slammed her palms against the thick metal.

If she couldn't get it open in time...

If the other end was sealed…

If there were HQ hunters waiting for anyone running…

If Zaizen…

Amon rounded the corner after Karasuma and saw her fighting with the front of the ventilation shaft. He started running faster to try and open the grate, but a burst of flame shot forward and the seal around the grate melted away. The grate fell from its place in the wall, Karasuma jumping to the side of it as it clattered against the metal floor of the hallway. He breathed a bare sigh of relief, slowing to collect himself. The end in sight.

* * *

"Whatever you're going to do, Michael," Sakaki said, snapping his final clip into place and ducking a bullet aimed at his head, "now would be a good time." 

"You can't rush me any more than I already am, Sakaki," Michael replied, typing quickly on the slim keyboard.

Across the hallway from them, the elevator doors opened once again, and Michael closed his computer. "What's this all about?" Sakaki asked.

"We're going to climb up the elevator shaft," Michael said.

"What about Amon and Robin and Karasuma?" Sakaki asked.

"We can't help them now," Michael said. "Everyone has to get out on their own at this point. Even you have to have realized that. In a situation like this the tactical goal is to recover as many endangered team members at possible, which means-"

Sakaki made a face, interrupting with, "I don't like leaving them behind."

"Under the circumstances," Michael said, looking meaningfully at the pile of empty gun clips, "I don't think we have much of a choice."

Haruto started to protest, and then followed Michael's eyes to the clips, and nodded sullenly. Michael was right, of course. He was always right. Haruto leaned out the alcove and fired off another series of shots. "After this round of firing, dive across the hallway," he says.

"How do you know-"

"You found us the way out, now use it," Haruto said, meeting the amber-glass covered eyes of his somehow superior meaningfully. He knew he wasn't a perfect hunter, and he certainly knew he wasn't a computer ace, or even always on top of things… but this he could do. This he knew.

Michael nodded, feeling his pulse racing. He knew he belonged behind a computer and not in front of a gun. Getting captured by the black-coated men at his family's home years ago had proven that to him. He had never wanted any of this, in the beginning. But then Robin... He shook his head to clear it, waiting tensely. The firing continued.

"Come on," Sakaki said under his breath, getting up onto his feet on top of the computer panel and bracing his back against the wall in preparation of following Michael towards their escape. "Everyone has to reload sometime."

The firing stopped and Michael sprang out of his crouching position, heading across the hallway as fast as he could.

Bullets followed Michael's feet across the hall and Sakaki leaned out into the hallway to fire at the person trying to hit the young hacker. There was a cry at the end of the hall, and Sakaki took the opportunity to sprint across after Michael, diving off the terminal he was crouched on and rolling into the section of the hallway leading to the elevator shaft.

Miraculously, neither of them were grazed by a single bullet.

The elevator shaft, as Michael suspected, was connected to a deeper emergency ladder shaft. He dropped down into the tunnel and crossed to the grated door leading tot he ladder, pulling on it to try and get it open. Behind him, he could hear Sakaki's grunting and the continued firing of guns.

The locked door didn't move. "Sakaki, over here!" he called back.

Backing up quickly towards Michael, Sakaki stumbled on his entrance to the elevator shaft, turning his ankle painfully. He forced himself to keep moving, knowing it wouldn't be long before the men with guns came to investigate their disappearance. Immediately he saw the problem. The ladder Michael stood before was faced, for six or seven feet, with a grate too small to climb, even with fingers and toes.

"Stand back," Sakaki said, glancing over his shoulder at the open elevator doors, and fired one of his last bullets at the lock on the door. Luckily, he hit the target exactly, and the lock broke with a spark.

Michael moved to grab it, but Sakaki grabbed him by the sleeve. "It's hot." He lifted a leg and kicked the lock loose, nodding. "Let's get moving."

* * *

The hallway echoed with Amon's footfalls, and the lighter footfalls of Robin behind him. Karasuma beckoned to them both, waiting for the rest of her team to reach her before entering the ventilation shaft. She was always a good leader, in this regard. And then the sound of everything was drowned out by something louder. Something more commanding. Amon didn't notice that his own footsteps slowed further, or that Robin stopped behind him. 

Karasuma jumped as the exit was separated from them by a panel that snapped shut, almost catching her clothing in the swift snick of it falling into place.

Amon stopped running altogether, glancing up as though he could see through everything between him and the outside. The noise of wires releasing permeated even the sealed underground. And then there was the slow, steady grinding of the massive stones coming down from above.

"We're too late, aren't we?" Robin asked, wobbling on her feet behind him. So much power in her blood... so many things she had done in such a short while. So much pain... Amon nodded once, staring at the closed panel before them. "Well then…" Robin said, steadying herself and bracing her feet farther apart to keep herself upright.

"Robin-" Karasuma started, moving back towards the other two, but there was a flash of brightness that surrounded her. Lifting her arms, she covered her face. For a moment Karasuma feared that the fire was payback... she worried, and then it was gone, without so much as a flicker of warmth added to her skin temperature. Miho found herself on the far side of the ventilation shaft, barely fitting and crouching. Her eyes widened and she moved forward, beating her fists against the panel that was in place between her, Robin and Amon.

The noise got louder as the stone picked up speed, descending faster through the levels of the underground complex. The hallway shook around them. Amon's eyes widened and he looked at where Karasuma was standing. He wondered if Robin... And then he heard her banging against the panel, faintly over the noise. "Amon! Robin!" Miho's voice shouted, sounding muffled through the metal.

"Karasuma," he said, turning and looking evenly at Robin, adrenaline suppressing his body's weakness, the Orbo's affects, and even his own fears. He raised his voice, "Go. We'll make our own way out."

Miho's breath came unsteadily at hearing Amon's calm words. Somehow his voice cut through the noise like a knife, and she felt a stab at her heart to hear his dismissal. It had never hurt her before, but something was different about it this time. Something… She started to argue. "Amon n-"

"Go now!" Amon shouted over his shoulder.

Robin felt the walls close to her, the air tight despite the fact that there were only two of them in the complex underneath the factory. She closed her eyes against the claustrophobia that threatened her. She wanted to send Karasuma to the surface, but she was just too tired to do it. And she wasn't sure how she was doing any of what she was intending, or if she would be able to do more... her thoughts fixed on Amon, and a hidden reserve of strength seemed to bolster her. Her muscles felt stronger, spine straightening as though there was a pole strapped to her back holding her upright.

"Did you bring your glasses?" Amon asked, needlessly. He took a step towards her, grabbing her by the forearm, and tugged her forward towards the panel. He could almost see the weariness in her small body, and then something changed about her.

"There is no time for the panel," Robin said, keeping her eyes closed despite the staggering steps he drags her forward. The rigidity holding her together got stronger, despite his rough treatment of her.

"What are you doing?" Amon asked, narrowing his eyes as the noise got louder around them. 'Too tired... what is she thinking?' he wondered to himself.

Green eyes opened and looked at Amon, caringly, and with determination behind them. "If this is the end, at least one of us can survive." Robin tried to pull her arm free of his grip, but she couldn't, so she settled for leaning back in his grasp as far as she could, her eyes focused on Amon.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Amon asked again. As she tried to pull away he tightened his grip on her wrist. The noise was almost deafening, and he could hardly make out the words that Robin said to him.

Robin took another step back, staring hard at Amon, finally finding the strength to wrench her wrist free of his grip, painfully. 'He is holding on tightly, she thought to herself, and then pushed thought from her mind. She focused herself on the strength she found in the thought of him, and anchored her thoughts on that, disregarding the other consequences. Her eyes slid shut once more. 'If I was never meant to be born…' she thought in a bitter voice not entirely her own, in the very back of her mind, 'And in case I should become addicted to the power of the witch blood inside me… At least he will be free.' But she found she could not be totally bitter, not about Amon. Never about Amon. Her lips moved, but no sound came out… nothing was louder than the crushing noise and the explosions caused by the falling rock above them, anyway.

Watching her closely, Amon saw Robin's eyes go unfocused just before she closed them. He looked around, but there was no fire. 'What is she using her craft on…?' The world moved very slow for Amon, and the Orbo pendant around his neck glowed green. He looked up to see Robin's lips still moving, the air around her shifting to move her bangs.

A rush of thought hit Amon and he heard, very clearly, 'At least he will be free.' He was puzzled where the thought had come from, but knew that there was only one place it could originate from.

The walls shuddered more slowly, and the loud, rushing sound became a dull roar in the background. The air warmed. He wondered how long since they had started to fall... how long had he and Robin been talking... and Karasuma...

"Robin…" Amon said warningly. Whatever she was going to do…

Amon felt weightless for a moment, the Orbo around his neck shattering and burning away before it hit the ground. The temperature of the air rose higher, and he could feel heat radiating from the air above his head. If he looked closely enough, despite a slight blur to his vision, he could make out sparks in the air. Stunned, he looked at Robin, and he saw that she stared at him, through him almost, hard with tears in her distant green eyes.

'Maybe the kid really does care about me,' Amon thought. And then a hundred other thoughts rushed in at the same instant. His mother. Toudou. Maria. Father Juliano. And lastly, Robin. Young, innocent Robin.

About to be dead, innocent Robin.

With a silent growl, Amon forced his body to move, fighting Robin's grip on him. Here and there the sparks around him seemed to try to ignite into actual flames.

Her green eyes blinked, and then focused, and she spoke to him with them, though her lips still moved silently, speaking words he could neither hear, nor is he sure he would understand if he could.

'Please,' her eyes said, 'please don't.'

Breaking her grip with a painful wrench of his near unwilling body, the world seemed to speed up again for Amon and he fell to the floor of the hallway, rolling into a crouch and springing forward towards Robin.

Overhead the stones sped up as well, a second or two slower than Amon's desperate leap, slamming down onto the lowest level of the underground complex.

* * *

The very walls began to shake. All around there was the echoing of snapping as cables were released. Doujima could not believe her eyes. The stone was falling on the lower levels of the factory. She started to run back, the only thought in her mind, '_Amon!'_, but Nagira grabbed her by the shoulder. 

"Not this time, little lady," Nagira said. "Little brother's got to look out for himself for once."

"Little… brother?" Doujima asked, looking up at him in confusion. Her mind raced as fast as her pulse and she frowned, piecing what she knew of the two men together and stepping over the bodies of the men fallen from their bullets. "Amon's your _brother_? How can that be?" she asked quietly, looking to Nagira for confirmation. The brown haired lawyer nodded. "They may need our help, we've got to-"

"Nothing is going to stop those bricks from falling. Not you or me anyway. Besides, we're not far enough out of danger's way as it is."

"What do you mean?" Doujima asked.

Nagira pointed up, motioning to the shuddering of the walls over their head. "The underground sector's not the only thing rigged to collapse. We're not far enough outside to worry about anyone's escape but our own."

_

* * *

Robin and Amon left this world with the Factory. That's what Doujima told me, but I can't believe it. But then, can you really believe anything she says..._


	2. Exodus 0:2

Series: Abs Calamitas

Exodus 0:2 – The Confines

Anime: Witch Hunter Robin

Rating: PG-13 (because of Orbo-blood)

A/N: _ Same thing with itallics from last chapter. Thanks for the encouragement and reviews, everyone._

* * *

In the end, Michael helped _drag_ Sakaki the rest of the way out. His turned ankle had hurt him during the climb, and he had forced Michael up the ladder first, in case he couldn't make it up.

Michael had been distressed by his lack of hope, but said nothing. When Sakaki slipped from near the top of the elevator shaft, it was Michael's hand that grabbed hold of his arm and hauled him back against the ladder. He had even skinned his knuckles on the rock that fell behind them.

After climbing to the top, the two of them rested a bit. "The attack force," Sakaki said, leaning over his knees carefully to keep from falling over. He straightened and winced. "We should keep moving... if they come..."

"Right," Michael said, stepping over and putting Sakaki's arm over his shoulder.

Glancing at the other young man, Sakaki smiled gratefully, and the two of them made their way towards the woods.

* * *

Robin blinked green eyes, surprised to still be alive. Amon had broken her concentration when he started struggling. She wasn't even entirely sure what she had been doing, but she trusted her heart to lead her craft, as Juliano had taught her, and knew that she was sending him to be safe, as safe as she had made Karasuma… no, safer. This was Amon, after all.

When her concentration was broken, she couldn't hold anything anywhere, and then Amon had knocked her to the ground, which was where she still lay. Somehow, she knew that the stone against his back was cooling from the heat that had been holding it in place moments before. The temperature a result of her Craft.

Amon's strong arms braced his body above her, spread on either side of them, and somehow, the two of them had not yet been flattened. He disregarded the pain of the Orbo bullet in his arm, it faded in proximity to her.

"Amon," Robin said softly. "What…"

"It's not as easy as you make it out to be," Amon's gruff voice replied, though his eyes were still closed. His dark hair fell forward, brushing her face lightly. She could sense the exertion of his body, and something else.

His Craft?

Only Witches and Seeds were affected by Orbo. Amon was a Seed. Her heart twisted a little at the touch of his pain that she felt, and then the pain faded.

"To be crushed seems easy enough," Robin replied, turning her head to the side. She looked at the wound in his arm. There was a dark green glow to the gap in his coat, and in the confines of the stale air, she could _smell_ the Orbo... something she never had to do before. "All you have to do is let go."

"Is that what you want?" Amon asked, his voice commanding she look at him again. She had to live, his voice reminded her. To find out... to know... His palms slid outward on the smooth metal floor they were braced against, pressing his body closer to hers, pushing him downward. His gray eyes opened and stared hard at the side of her face that was presented to them.

Turning her face back to his, she could feel his breath in the even closer confines of the two of them very definitely between a rock and a hard place. Through the thick press of her clothing she felt the cold of the metal floor beneath her, and the air tasted stale and foul. Despite the desperate situation, her mind wandered. Is this what was left beneath? Underneath the world… was there truly Hell waiting? Or was it just this dead smelling cold?

Amon hissed, and Robin's attention was called, again, to the situation at hand. Her green eyes focused on his face. _How was Amon doing this_? How could he…? The bullet... her eyes met his and she suddenly felt very small in comparison to him.

"Is that what you want?" Amon snapped, angry.

"Amon, I …" Robin began, unsure of what to say.

Muscles taught across his back, and with a sharp pain pressing at his temples, Amon was of a short temper. "You ask questions. Now. Answer me."

"No," she said, "it's not what I want."

"Well," Amon said, straining to hold the rock from the two of them. His hands slid another fraction of an inch outwards on the metal floor she was pressed against, and his tense back began to complain at him. Even a strong man shouldn't be able to hold up a stone of that magnitude, his body seemed to be reminding him. The thought nagged at the back of his mind.

Reaching up carefully, Robin took the front of Amon's jacket in her gloved hands, by the lapels, and again her eyes unfocused. Whatever she had been trying to do before… She closed her eyes to half-mast.

Amon felt the weightlessness take hold of him again, and the stale air picked up in the crawl space not crushed by the stone. It was hot, not just warm, and there was sweat on his brow before he could say anything. His eyes registered that again there were sparks in the air, and then his vision went blurry again and he could no longer maintain control of his wounded body. He shut his eyes against the dry heat of the air and let whatever was happening… whatever she was doing… play itself out.

He decided, in that instant, to trust Robin... to trust a Witch... with his life. He knew he had done no less as a child. As the ground heated up, his gloved palms slid outwards with the weight against a back that seemed no longer able to hold the impossible weight. Amon's knees did the same, having very little purchase against the too-hot metal, and he was forced downwards onto her.

If Robin's eyes had been open, she would have seen the stone push Amon down the inches against her, and not been nearly as startled. They were shut, however, and so she felt the bulk of his body press her against the floor before the two of them were pushed through it. Flames radiated outward, ignited from the very air around the two of them, and Robin gripped Amon's shirt and jacket tightly to keep from losing track of him. The two of them were falling, somehow, impossibly, through the scalding floor.

And then whatever she had been trying to do happened, and instead of feeling the rush of the hot earth around her, Robin felt a pleasant wind and smelled the scent of the sea.

* * *

Listening to Doujima on her mobile, Nagira pushed himself up, heading away from the scattered shells and blood on the concrete near the entrance. The rush of dust obscured his leave taking from Doujima, but he tipped his non-existent hat to her anyway before making his way clear. Hunter or not, it would be hard to track a human during a crisis.

Best if no one who wasn't involved knew he was even involved, he thought to himself. His body was a little stiff from all the crouching and the dodging of bullets. He had been grazed once or twice, but nothing serious. He pulled his coat tighter around himself and moved on his way.

He was really getting too old for this sort of thing, he thought to himself in a twinge of sentimentality. Better to leave it to the courageous young people who had training in it. He chuckled under his breath, nearly silently, and wandered away.

Doujima coughed, pushing herself up as the dust settled, and looked around. "Nagira?"

There was no answer.

She smiled to herself. "Good idea," she said softly, getting to her feet.

* * *

Robin and Amon continued falling through darkness until they hit sand. Robin's mind ran wild. She hadn't the strength to lift them to safety, as she had moved Karasuma... but where were they falling to?

The sound of waves was a near threatening reminder of the sound of the rock sliding ever downwards, and Robin felt claustrophobic enough to try and shove Amon off of her. Her arms were not strong enough, but she pushed his hip with her knee, and finally got him off. Collapsing back against the sand, Robin panted, sucking in the sweet fresh air of the seashore, and wondered, in the back of her mind, where the two of them had ended up.

And then she decided that she didn't really care.

Her arm throbbed where he had grabbed it, and she held it to her chest, closing her eyes against the bright sunshine. "We're alive," she said aloud in a soft voice, feeling the truth tingling in every pore of her body.

A groan beside her told her that Amon was not nearly as jubilant at the news, and the dark man sat up, swiping dark hair from his eyes. "Where are we?" he asked first. A cloud passed in front of the sun.

"I am… not entirely sure," Robin replied.

There was silence for a long moment. Overhead the sun came out, and the white sand on the beach became almost blinding. Amon turned his head to glance up and down the beach, taking in Robin's reclining form at the same time. "What was all that about?"

"All what?" Robin asked, clueless.

"You were going to send me away," Amon said, eyes narrowing. In that instant, faced with the possibility, it had suddenly become very important to him that he not be sent away. After that thought he overheard… he didn't understand how she could just… "You were going to put me here and let yourself be sacrificed."

Closing her eyes at the truth of the words, Robin didn't respond to him at first, and then finally came up with something said to her nearly a year ago, now. "I was fulfilling my destiny."

"You becoming a martyr for _me_ isn't your destiny," Amon said in a low, angry voice. The brightness of the beach bothered his eyes after the long night in the dark Factory, and he narrowed them to keep from needing to shield them from the glare.

"But I can become one because of you?" Robin asked in a voice as quiet as a whispering wind through a graveyard. She hated having to bring that up to him, hated that there was a twinge of doubt in her mind about whether or not it was really him to try and kill her. Whether he might still feel the way he felt that night…

Somehow, as the stones had begun falling and she was faced with the burden of her birth, she had grown up. Her affection for Amon was still as strong as a lighthouse's beacon over stormy waters, but she could not deny what had happened. So, she did feel a doubt, small as it was. Starting off whatever life was left to them after STN-J and Tokyo, she didn't want that weighing over her mind.

"What happened in the past should stay there," Amon said, looking down the beach again, to get away from her hurt green eyes. He hadn't really come to terms with why he didn't shoot her. He hadn't really come up with an answer for her, after all this time. And his head was spinning, probably from the exertion of the day. His body tingled, and memories seemed to grasp at the edge of his vision. "From now on, defend yourself, no matter who attacks you."

"Amon," Robin said, looking at his profile in the bright light of the sun. Her heart raced at his admission. And that he knew... knew that the only person she would let kill her was him.

"No matter who," Amon said, reinforcing his words, both for himself and for her. Robin... was Robin. "Protect yourself from others. I will protect you from yourself."

"All right," she replied, leaning back wearily against the sand. Whatever it was that she did in the basement of the Factory had required a lot of her energy. She closed her eyes slowly. If that was the way that things were, it was the way that things were. Amon spoke the truth. The past was not a thing that could be changed. What mattered most was what had happened since then. Amon hadn't killed her. Not when he had the ability in Touko's apartment, and not when she was cornered by him at Nagira's office. She felt the weight of it almost physically against her chest, but as soon as she realized what she was feeling, it seemed to slide off of her.

She breathed deeply of the sea air and loosened the collar of her dress. "Rest up, I'm going to go have a look around." She heard the rustle of his clothing as he got to his feet.

Peeking weary eyes open, she asked, "How will you find me?"

"You're a big black mark on a white beach," he said as he turned, forcing his disoriented body to obey him, "I don't think it'll be too hard." He bristled, a little, at her need to know where he was, her near-desperate clinging to him. In the back of his mind he knew that it was less Robin's clinging than it was his own projections of her clinging. In her bright green eyes, when she looked at him in question, he saw his own, and heard his own voice questioning his mother.

An unhealthy thing to start to their time on this island with.

He shrugged it off. 'Besides,' he thought, 'the world did just end for the two of us. It's a little natural to cling to other survivors.' But deep down he knew that wasn't all of it. That Robin's clinging had more to do with something else… something he wouldn't admit to acknowledging.

Robin started to respond, and then found herself chuckling, closing her eyes against the heat and glare of the sun, and she fell quickly asleep. After non-stop investigations and battles, and with the power she exerted in the Factory, her body welcomed the rest.

Amon headed down the beach. Let Robin cling, if she needed to, he decided. Nothing would come of it.

* * *

_It was an accident. An accident and a miracle. No, that's not it. That's... _


	3. Exodus 0:3

Series: Abs Calamitas

Exodus 0:3 – Limbo

Anime: Witch Hunter Robin

* * *

Meeting up with Nagira outside was both a blessing and a curse. He had always seemed a bit aloof to Sakaki, who envied the older man's easy rapport with Amon, he never spoke straight to anyone. Michael was glad to see him. The short conversation did some good to his frazzled nerves. Even bullet-grazed and dirty, Nagira was collected and calm. The tall, older brother of the team leader seemed brotherly to everyone, at times. And his final words to them as he headed off towards the city once more, on foot and with a slight limp, were, "Be careful when you approach the people that came for you guys; they pulled a gun on Miss Doujima."

Sakaki didn't seem very mollified by that, but he nodded his thanks for the heads up anyway. Nagira disappeared off into the woods, and Michael watched the older man for a long while.

"You probably shouldn't be seen here either, Michael," Sakaki said, getting up onto unsteady feet. "You're not supposed to leave Raven's Flat, after all."

A sliver of ice stabbed at Michael's heart hearing that. He got to his feet and dusted off his pants. Was that all that Sakaki thought of him as? A pawn of Zaizen? "Zaizen was the only one who knew that, HQ never heard of how he acquired me."

Wincing, Sakaki knew he'd, yet again, said something wrong. It was a normal part of his day, he guessed. Open mouth, insert foot, he thought. The rest of the day had simply been going too well, he had seemed too mature. So of course he did something to show off how far he had to go. His age was showing... his inexperience. Michael started off down the hill towards where the lights from the vehicles that had arrived during the commotion of the collapse could be seen, and Sakaki limped after him, aware that whatever goodwill his coworker felt for him was worn pretty thin by that last comment of his. His ankle hurt, throbbing with his pulse, but he refused to ask for help.

* * *

Amon returned from his walk, having found little that did not suggest they were on an island in the middle of the ocean, with a headache rearing its ugly head. Finding sweat dotting Robin's brow, and damp marks in her thick clothing, he knelt and lifted her from the sand, wavering even at the addition of her light weight, and carried her to the grass where there was shade from the trees of the small, dense forest on the island. Drinking water, thankfully, could be had at an inland spring. Somehow the water was not salt ridden as the waves lapping the white beach were.

Idly, he glanced over at her, and saw red marks on her cheekbones. "Sun burn," he said aloud to himself, knowing she was unlikely to wake up over a simple phrase from him. He sat down in the sand and put his back against the nearest tree wearily.

Surprisingly, Robin stirred at the sound of his voice.

"Sleep," Amon chided her. "There will be time for talk later."

A lot of talk, apparently. No way off the island. Not a ship or land in sight. There would be time for nothing but talk. He glanced her over, trying to ignore how small she seemed in the thick fabric of her long gown. He settled against the tree. Hours and hours of talk.

Before long, Amon's eyelids closed as well.

* * *

Coughing at the dust, Karasuma crawled up into a part of the ventilation shaft where she could see light. She turned her head up towards it. The final turn of the shaft was vertical. Slipping her shoes off, she braced her back against one part of the metal and pushed her feet against the opposite side. She set her shoes on her stomach and began making her slow way up the shaft, using her hands against the sides.

By the time she reached the top, her muscles were sore and straining, and her entire body felt worn out. She gripped the edge of the wide shaft, the top of which had been dislodged enough by the tremors of the falling rock that she could push the grate away and pull herself out, groaning as she felt the cool concrete against her face. She heard her shoes clatter against the ground, and slowly turned over, pulling them on.

Time to go home. Finally.

Glancing around, she saw that she was not entirely outside, and stumbled along until she found a wall and felt the gentle brush of fresh air on her face.

* * *

Robin woke from the same nightmare as always, gasping for breath and reaching out to put her arms around herself. It was early evening, but over the water of the ocean, the colors had already begun to change from daylight to those of a long leisurely sunset. Her wide eyes glanced up and down the beach, unsure of her setting, and then she regarded the sleeping Amon, still wearing his STN-J jacket, body lax, chin resting against his breast bone. The sight of him calmed her, and alarmed her at the same time. She had never woken up to find him so near, at least not when they were not in a car.

Her clothes felt heavy, the fabric sticky against her skin. Sitting up slowly, she saw that she had been moved from her former position in the sun, and her eyes turned immediately to Amon. He was the only one around. He was the only one who could have done it. A smile played on her lips, just slightly, and she reached down to take off her boots, pulling off her socks to let her toes touch the sand that was cool in the early evening breeze.

"Paradise," she said quietly, pulling her knees up to her chest as she watched the sun drift downwards toward the horizon. Her eyes shifted to look over at Amon's slumbering form, and she nodded, repeating the word to herself. "Paradise."

Slowly, the sensation of being watched drew Amon from his slumber, and he startled awake, reaching instantly for his Orbo gun and getting to the balls of his feet in a fluid movement. He relaxed, a little, when he saw that Robin was unharmed, and slowly replaced his Orbo gun in its holster. His eyes don't seem to focus properly, but he forced himself to his feet, blinking at the light of the sun as it sunk from the sky.

"The sunset isn't going to attack," Robin said quietly, staring at the brightly colored sky. "It never has before."

Amon favored her with a look that said there was little that could not attack, but she was not paying attention to him in that moment, instead letting all the colors sink into her eyes happily. She let out a small sigh.

"There's drinking water inland, we should get some before it gets too dark."

Robin nodded, rising slowly to her feet, unsurprised to find herself still unsteady. Amon reached out a hand wordlessly and steadied her by an arm. She winced. He looked meaningfully at her for a moment before knowledge dawned on him.

"This way," he said, breaking the awkward silence between them, loosening his grip on her arm with a small bit of effort. More effort than it should take to control himself. He headed towards the small dense jungle, breaking trail through the brush, stomping his feet to jar his body into submission.

Following behind him as he broke trail through the foliage, Robin watched the movement of his strong shoulders beneath he black material of his coat. He didn't appear to be paying much attention to her, though his gloved hand continued to guide her along by the elbow. Robin slowed, just a little, and his step took him forward, hand sliding down to clasp her gloved hand. "What is it?" he asked.

She could feel him tense as he asked the question, knew that his fingers itched to grasp his Orbo gun. Her heart twisted in her chest at the thought of the Orbo he carried. Even though he knew what it contained...

His words from earlier came to mind and calmed her. _What happened in the past should stay there_. She nodded to herself. "Nothing," she said, looking up at him with an even expression on her face. Inside, she knew why he was agitated. Even if his brain had not come to a final conclusion about Orbo, she knew that he missed the protection it had once brought him. Seeing her deal so easily with it... to do away with what had seemed so unbeatable...

She wondered if he was afraid of her.

Amon nodded in response to her, pushing through the plant life again, and pulling her along by the hand. Up ahead he could hear the noise of the small waterfall that fed the pool of clean water. He was reassured by the fact that it hadn't changed, and that he had found it even in a slightly impaired state.

Robin's eyes widened and a smile spread across her lips as she looked at the source of fresh water that Amon had mentioned as though it were a small stream and they would have to ration. He let go of her hand and she picked her skirts up, glad that the length had protected her skin from the plants, so long as she was following behind in his footsteps, and headed over to the edge of the pool, kneeling to pull off her gloves.

Amon lowered himself to his knees and crouched, watching Robin with bleary eyes as she drank from the spring. His mind switched his train of thought quickly before it went places he couldn't afford to, and he thought back to the conversation with Zaizen in the bowels of the Factory. His gray eyes traced the lines of Robin's shoulders as she slid her gloves from her hands and cupped them to lift water to her mouth, moistening sun-dried lips.

The "Eve" of witches.

His mind swam with thoughts.

He closed his eyes at the thought of the word, only to open them again as she shifted, her skirts parting slightly as she moved on her shins, and he saw that she was barefoot. A frown creased his face as he made out the sight of her pale skin in her dark skirts. His head was pounding. "Robin, where are your shoes?"

The young witch sat up straight, turning her head to glance at him with one green eye in profile, and worried teeth over her bottom lip. "I left them on the beach."

Her heart thudded in her chest, silently wondering if she'd done something unforgivable, but Amon just nodded and returned to the faraway stare she somehow knew he had on his face the whole time. She turned back to the water and took another drink.

Amon gazed at her bare feet, tucked almost humbly under her as she sat, and let his mind wander further. He lifted a hand to the wound of the concentrated Orbo bullet and his nerve endings finally caught up with him. The pain in his head intensified, and he felt the pain of the wound rush up and down his arm. He stifled a groan, but not quickly enough.

"Amon?" Robin turned on her knees. When she saw the pained look on his face she got up and crossed over to him. "What's wrong?"

He shook his head, covering his arm with a clenched hand. "There's nothing to be done about it," he said, lowering his eyes from her as she approached.

"Amon," Robin said, crouching before him. Her gloves lay behind her at the edge of the pool and she lifted bare hands to the dark gloved one of Amon's that clutched his arm. "Let me see," she said softly.

He allowed his fingers to be pulled free by her smaller ones, silently wondering if any of it mattered. Such a little thing... to be so powerful... to be so responsible for everything... He felt Robin's hands gently peel away his dark jacket so that she could look at the wound more properly, and he let her, the damp feeling of his glove a reminder of his injury. It was easier than fighting it.

"Can you undo your shirt?" Robin asked in a soft voice.

Amon blinked, turning to look at her suspiciously, and then thought better of his misgivings. Robin, though responsible, he remembered, was still barely more than a child.

"Ah. I need to see the wound." Robin's face remained innocent, her expression caring. She knew he would remember her problem with seeing things from back when she still had use for glasses.

Seeing the look in her green eyes, Amon unbuttoned the gray over-shirt he wore, allowing her to help pull the fabric down his arm, revealing the deep gash from the Orbo bullet. The flesh of his arm was stained red with the blood flowing from the bullet wound, and even Amon was surprised to see how much he had lost.

"You held up the stone," Robin said, her green eyes unfocused for a moment.

Warmth spread up through the wounded flesh of his arm, and he looked at Robin with a curious expression. He was surprised to find that it didn't hurt. Not since Kurosawa had he seen a Witch's power used to help anyone... or even be remotely medicinal in nature. It most often seemed that the power generated by the genes of a witch served darker purposes than what she was using hers for in that moment.

And he had no idea that she knew how to do that.

Robin closed her eyes, and gently lifted her hands to the bare skin of Amon's arm, tracing her fingers along the edge of the wound. The warmth spread throughout his body as she spoke. "The Orbo entered your blood stream," Robin said. "I am certain it is most painful."

A sarcastic smile curved Amon's lips as she said that. "It's under control."

"It's hard to say that about life," Robin said. "It does things you don't expect."

Amon turned gray eyes to look at her, and found that he could once again focus them, even though he still felt disoriented. Now that the pain was drifting away, he was nauseated by the sensation of it. Idly, he wondered if this was the way that Witches he'd hunted using Orbo felt as they stumbled and fell to the ground, when they clutched their wounds and trembled.

"How do you feel?" Robin asked, her green eyes sombre, her expression caring. The pain of knowing how Orbo was created was fresh in her veins, and it coupled with the pain she could sense radiating from Amon, both from the Orbo she was boiling out of his blood stream, and the torment deeper within. The pain of Orbo, the knowledge of it was something she knew she would simply have to bear, but Amon's pain... that was different. His first pain was easy to understand, but she was too afraid to dare to ask him about what the deeper torment was.

Intending to remain silent, Amon met her eyes, and found his lips moving anyway, as he read her expression and saw her discomfort. "Better."

And as he said it, he found that it was true.

A smile lit Robin's face and she pulled the dark gray over shirt up to cover his wound, and the expanse of his strong, pale flesh that moving his shirt had born to the air, and to her.

* * *

_In the end, our daily lives returned to those days of the Hunt. Of course a lot of things have changed, but... Robin and Amon... The two of them, along with this facility... I guess that's the way it is._


	4. Numbers 1:1

Series: Abs Calamitas

Numbers: 1:1

Anime: Witch Hunter Robin / Abs Calamitas

A/N: _Sorry sorry sorry this took so long, I have been much distracted, and getting tense edits is difficult in the editorial process! Thank everyone for reading and reviewing! _

* * *

That first night the two of them slept close together, because Amon, in his half-stricken state, had not thought to look for wood for a fire, or any shelter. They were lucky that the weather held and there was no real need for either. Robin hardly slept, feeling him so close. Her heart hammered in her chest, so loudly she almost expected him to ask her to quiet down. His back was to her back, and through their clothes she felt the thick muscles of him. He had to feel her trembling, she thought, and bit her lip. 

But he said nothing. He did not move all evening, and rose in the morning while she finally got some rest.

It was a night the dreams did not plague her, and she was grateful for that, even if she was tired when he gently shook her shoulder to rouse her. "Time to wake up, Robin," he said in a soft voice, as though he did not entirely mean what he was saying to her.

His own internal schedule worked whether he was ill or healthy. He didn't think it was nearly as necessary for her to follow the same strict schedule. She looked so tired…

Robin sneezed as she woke up, sand tickling her nose. "Amon?"

"We're going to make a shelter today. And then I'll gather wood so that tonight we have a fire." He sat up, leaning against a gloved hand on the sand. "We'll gather some fruit to eat this morning and I'll try to see if there are any fish."

She held her opinion on fish to herself.

* * *

"I don't want to hear it," Nagira said as he walked into his office. The same thing every day from Hanamura. 'Where's Robin?' He lit a cigarette and headed over to his desk, looking at the incoming paperwork. 

"I wasn't going to say _that_, necessarily," Mika said with a pointed twist of her lips.

"It's the same thing you say every morning, Hana-chan," Nagira replied. "It's more regular than the taste of your coffee."

His secretary narrowed her eyes at him, and straightened the stack of paper in her hands. "I was actually going to say that you had a very early visitor this morning, but I won't bother now. Men are all the same. One young lover leaves town, they find another one to replace her fast as you please."

"Visitor?"

"She's upstairs," the quiet voice of his accountant offered. Hirata kept his eyes down on his own paperwork wisely.

Rising, Nagira crossed to the door and waved at the two of them before heading upstairs. He didn't bother knocking on the door, knowing that whoever was inside was dressed, unlike Robin.

He had made the unfortunate mistake of entering the room one morning before knocking, and had seen her head and shoulders peaking out of the bath tub. It was then that he thought to check... and found that she had not brought pajamas. It had taken a gulping moment to decide if he was going to accept what his half-brother had set out for him to do, or if he was going to do something else. In the end, Nagira decided to leave Amon the girl entrusted into his care alone, and started treating her like the little sister that he had an inkling she could eventually become, in some form or fashion. After that he had always knocked on the door to what he still considered Robin's room. This time, he didn't bother. He turned the knob and pushed open the door, arching a brow at the smiling face under the blond hair that greeted him.

"So," Doujima asked, "did you miss me?"

Nagira let out a chuckle and nodded. "Of course I did." He leaned against the pillar in the entranceway and regarded the young woman, a smile coming to his lips. "So little time and you're already back on my doorstep, miss. What can I do for you?"

"It's about a friend of mine," Doujima said, sobering slightly. "Is there anywhere to sit down?"

"Not up here," Nagira said, "and I don't suppose you'd like to come downstairs."

"I can't say that I appreciate the look your secretary gave me," Doujima said with a smile, "It's what brought me up here in the first place. I figured you'd have possession of the apartment as well. I just didn't expect to find it so unfurnished."

"No one lives here anymore," Nagira said with a shrug. "And the last tenant wasn't too picky."

"Is that how you sweet talk all the girls?"

Nagira let out a self-effacing chuckle, and gave no more response to her prod. "Maybe you should just tell me what you need, hm? We're both busy people and with nowhere to sit down..."

Doujima's cheery smile faded almost instantly, and she gave a half nod. "Amon... and Robin... do you know-?"

"No," Nagira said. "Nothing new. Nothing old. It's a dry well leading nowhere."

"Ah," Doujima said, brightening in a manner Nagira could read as being quite fake. "I won't take more of your time today then."

"Feel free to take as much as you like," Nagira said with a smile as he opened the door for her. "Next time you may want to come during regular office hours. I don't usually come in until ten or so."

Bowing, Doujima headed out the door, straightening her jacket. She turned into the staircase and saw Hanamura, and decided, wisely, to hold in her groan of displeasure. The sharp-eyed secretary scowled as Nagira followed the blond hunter out of the small apartment. Nagira looked at the sharply dressed woman and blinked.

As Doujima headed down the stairs, over her shoulder, she heard Nagira ask a bewildered, "What did I do this time?"

* * *

The days turned into weeks. Even Amon stopped wearing his shoes around the sandy beaches of the island. No ships come by on the water, no disturbances break the tranquility of the setting. His arm healed, the two of them got sunburnt, and the sunburn passed. 

But the tranquility was almost too much. Glancing over at Robin's sleeping form, he sensed, not for the first time, that she is troubled in her dreams. Her face creased in a frown and she turned her head, pulling away from him in the shade of their small makeshift abode.

"Amon," she said in a fitful manner, hands tensing at her sides.

The sun has been good for her, adding color to her pale skin, what little of it shows, lightening her strawberry blond hair some. Her eyes stand out more when they are open. The only thing that bothered Amon was that rest seemed beyond her power.

He shifted, leaning over her, and shook her shoulder gently to rouse her. After hurting her during the escape from the Factory, he had been exceedingly careful not to damage her or harm her in any way. He could not justify that to himself. Not after declaring himself her warden.

Killing a Witch was one thing. Abusing a wom- … a girl, girl he reminded himself firmly, had never been a part of his modus operandi.

Especially not one in his care.

Green eyes burst open, bulging a little as though she was being strangled, and Robin sat up, gasping for breath.

By tacit agreement, Amon had not asked her about her dreams. Robin said nothing about them because she was fairly certain he had no wish to know of them. A lot between them remained unsaid in the open sunshine of the island. Robin turned her face from Amon. She was ashamed, feeling that she should have no further qualms about him, after his admission and their reconciliation.

Thinking it his touch that drew her away, Amon lifted his hand from her shoulder.

"Still no ships?" Robin asked softly. Amon never specifically said anything about it, but she knew that was what kept his eyes glued to the horizon. The lean-to they constructed together was situated on the highest of the rocks above the waterfall, and she thought that the reason for it.

"No," Amon said, watching her for a long moment. "And no change in the weather. No tropical storms, no rain, not even a rough breeze."

"That may not mean anything," Robin said, "given the month of the attack, if we landed on a tropical island there would be no need for there to be storms."

"Most islands are affected by the sea around them," Amon replied, turning his eyes again to the water below. "But the sea here seems placid and calm all the time. Even at sunset. There are no fish, only fruit, and no insects."

"Where do you think we are then?" Robin asked softly.

"I'm not sure," Amon admitted, getting to his feet. "But wherever here is, we fell _through_ the earth to get here." She offered him no explanation. After a moment he gave up waiting for one. He headed towards the path leading down to the small forest on the island and eventually towards the beach.

"Are you going to go and swim?"

Amon nodded. His way of staying in good physical condition. Running in the morning before the sun rose too high the temperature followed, laps of the white sand beach. Swimming in the afternoon. Push-ups and sit-ups in the evening before a meal.

In the time that has passed, even the few weeks, his body had become less bulk and more stiff toned muscle, to Robin's eyes. She herself had lost a little weight around the middle from the sudden strict vegetarianism. Or rather, from the fruititarianism.

Unlike Amon, she exercised much less, deciding to swim in the early afternoon and preferring to walk and occasionally jog around the beach to keep her heart muscles in shape. Her craft remained virtually untouched, for obvious reasons, only one of them the dark clad figure preparing to take a swim in the water.

She found herself a little timorous of it, and so she refrained from more than lighting the evening fire. Amon had searched and searched for a flint somewhere on the island, but had come up with nothing. He was a hunter, not a camper, Robin theorized, and it wasn't as obvious to him as it could be where one might be. She looked too, and also found nothing.

There was another wordless agreement that she would light the evening fire.

Amon's feet led him to the beach, and she blushed as she watched, from the distance, him strip out of the heavy black clothing that was all he had to wear. Every day for the last week and a half she found herself staring as he stripped down to swim, cheeks flushed. Thankfully his swims were long, and she had yet to stare as he exited the water. It was easy to avoid him on his return from the beach, and she walked the small patch of green until she felt confident she could meet him in the eyes without divulging her little secret.

He broke way into the water, oblivious of Robin's stare, and moved to hip-depth before diving into it.

"Where is here, anyway?" Robin asked herself, recalling her earlier statement... though half awake, of calling it paradise. If it is paradise, she wondered, whose is it? Did she fashion it herself or did she simply bring the two of them there...?

Amon's frantic words in the factory began to make more sense, she found. What would it have meant if she had sent him here alone? Amon is little without a purpose, without an occupation. The exercise proved that.

Alone on a deserted island, what would Amon have done?

* * *

Coming back into the STN-J office, Doujima waved to the security guard and headed up the elevator, surprised to find Michael and Sakaki the only two in the office. She checked her watch. No, she thought, still early. 

"Any luck," Michael asked, fingers flying across the keyboard. His amber glasses sat pristinely on his face, not even a scratch from his adventure in the Factory apparent on their surfaces, and his headphones blared music loud enough to drown out the noise of the fluorescent lights overhead.

"Why do you always listen to those things so loud?" Doujima replied loudly, shrugging out of her jacket and tossing it onto her chair before flopping bonelessly into it. "No news is good news, I suppose."

"Right," Sakaki said, tipping his head back and glancing at the blond woman from the corner of his eye, a thick folder of hard copy in front of him. "We're all looking and no one can find them. That's supposed to be good?"

"It's better than finding them dead," Doujima said in an outburst of anger. So long they had been gone... moving on to a second month. Not that she, or any of them, had really expected the two black listed hunters to return to the STN-J or to invite their fellow hunters to tea, but there ought to have been some whiff of information somewhere.

Telepathic witches weren't even really picking up anything, when they were willing to talk at all. That bit of information she got through Nagira, not being in a position to interrogate any Witch not on the hunt list. The STN-J met more resistance to divulging information now, since Robin's so-called awakening and disappearance. But, as Michael assured them, the other Solomon offices were reporting the same problems in field reconnaissance. At least, the Director had mused, they are not alone in being shunned.

The noise of the elevator moving in the background punctuated the pause after Doujima's words.

"You mean like the Witches?" Sakaki asked in a disgruntled tone. "I'm starting to feel like a Factory retrieval team member more than a Hunter."

Recently, some of their upcoming targets, the more note-worthy ones, had begun falling off the map. Some dying off, some mysteriously losing powers they seemed to have been in moderate control of most of their lives. Hunts were not so much drying up as becoming mop-up.

"Sakaki!" Doujima snapped, getting to her feet angrily.

No one mentioned the Factory, any more.

"Calm down, Doujima," Michael said, eyes still scanning the screen in front of him. "He's just voicing what we're all feeling."

"But what does it mean?" Doujima asked, running hands through her thick blond hair. In the month since the disappearance it became her nervous habit, much worse than when they were understaffed.

"Obviously it means that someone else is killing off Witches," Michael said, fingers still flying on the keyboard.

"But why would Witches kill one another for power?" Doujima asked. "They haven't up until now."

"Just because we don't know that they've been doing it doesn't mean that the Witches haven't been killing each other off for ages," Sakaki said, sitting up properly and shrugging his shoulders. "As far as we know they could've been doing it since Witches were called crones."

Michael's shoulders tensed a little. He disliked this thread of conversation. Just how he never liked hearing hunters discussed when Robin was still around. It hit a little too close to home, he thought, that his colleagues should think about hunting one another.

"Talk about something else," Michael said softly, reaching down to turn his headphones up louder, focusing his attention once more on the screen before him.

* * *

Dry and warm by the fire, Amon gazed into the flames like a lost soul. His thoughts were too many and too deep to rouse himself from. 

"Amon," Robin said in a quiet voice as she sat down beside him on the soft sandy seat. He glanced at her with dark gray eyes filled with confusion and with trouble, and she offered a smile and set the fruit she brought for him down on his knee. "You want to leave," she said, tipping her chin back to look up at the starry sky.

"Mm," Amon replied. "Staying here gains us nothing."

"It's safe," Robin replied, though she wasn't quite sure where she came up with that idea in the first place. "No one will attack us here. That's something, isn't it?"

"Nothing happens here at all," Amon said. "The days and nights are all the same. The light comes, the light goes. The wind rustles the leaves of the trees and cools away sweat. The trees grow fruit."

Robin pulled he knees up to her chest and picked at the fruit. "It's beautiful. Paradise."

"If this is paradise, I would rather have the real world," Amon said, pushing his thumbs into the fruit angrily.

Taking a slow bite of her own fruit, a mango, she figured it probably was, Robin looked at the fire as well, silently.

Amon glanced at the flames and then over at his darkly clad companion. The rock against his back, he thought, had been hot when he let go. The rock through his gloves, he thought, had been near burning when they pushed through… he remembers these things dimly, as though they are from a dream. His closed eyes, her fingers trembling against his collar – like the island and the placid sea surrounding it – just like a dream.

He stared for a long moment at Robin. Warm air. Warm rock. The warmth that had spread through him when she healed away the Orbo wound. The only way off the island, he realized, is likely through Robin's intervention. Her craft…

"You're staring," Robin said softly.

"Am I?" Amon replied, continuing to look closely at her for a long moment before turning his eyes back to the fire.

"You want to leave," she said again.

"I do not trust this place," Amon said. "Too quiet."

Robin remained silent. The fire flickered in front of them for a long while, leaving each to their own silent thoughts until a cold breeze blew, ruffling clothing and hair and sending a chill up the spine of her slender body.

"It's cold," Robin said, putting her arms around herself tighter, turning to look for her jacket. Just as she saw it, across the small clearing, she felt the weight of material drop onto her shoulders.

"Keep your jacket closer," Amon said, sitting back on his heels and lifting his fruit from the ground, repressing the shiver in his own frame.

Robin looked at him for a long moment and then turned her eyes back towards the fire.

"Don't," Amon said. "At night someone may see the fire."

Robin held herself back from saying that if the time that's passed was not enough time to tell that no one was coming then he had too much hope. She sighed and sat back, pulling his coat closer against the chill on the wind. It smelled of him, reassuring, and was thick. She cannot tell what smell it was exactly…

Amon shifted, putting a hand on the fruit clutched in one of her slender hands, and lifted it to her mouth. "Eat," he said, "you need to keep your strength up."

"Ah," Robin said, obediently taking a bite from the fruit.

"Tonight," Amon said, "we will sleep closer together for warmth."

He tried to tell himself that he was doing this for practicality. That he had decided that whatever may happen to them at night was too dangerous to confront with nothing but more fire and a potentially useless gun to combat it with. Seeds and Witches might not be affected in the same manner as humans by the bullet, though the pain of being shot would still remain.

Amon did not look at Robin's face before he rose to collect her jacket.


	5. Numbers 1:2

Series: Abs Calamitas

Numbers: 1:2

Anime: Witch Hunter Robin / Abs Calamitas

A/N: Thanks to everyone for reading and reviewing! Please forgive inappropriate tense changes, my beta and I have lost touch.

* * *

In the back of his mind, Sakaki always knew he was a rookie. Fighting with Doujima proved it; Michael having to constantly correct him proved it. But when the new hunter arrived, he _knew_ it. Hands down.

He was really glad that the one they got wasn't the final replacement. Patricia Jane Nye, from the STN office in England looked like everything he could imagine that country would come up with. She was slightly rounder than he considered necessary for the running that a Solomon Hunter should be involved in, and slightly older than she ought to be.

Karasuma had briefed them all that morning that the Hunter would be arriving, and told them to act natural. As Miho was the new head of the STN-J hunters, they had all made varying noises of capitulation.

Michael showed Sakaki Miss Nye's file, and he was unimpressed. But Sakaki had decided to do his best not to make a scene with the woman on her first day, if at all. The elevators brought her and Karasuma up to the office level of Raven's Flat, and he had to take a sip of his tea to keep from making a face.

"And this is the STN-J," Karasuma said in a polite voice to the other woman.

Young, in the STN-J, was a relative term before. Everyone in the STN-J was 'young'. Everyone in the STN-J _was_ younger than the Chief… until now. The woman that Karasuma led on a tour through the facilities looked old enough to be someone's mother. Her brown eyes turned on Sakaki and he swallowed.

Old enough to be _his_ mother, at least.

Doujima chuckled until the same stern brown eyes turned on her. She fell silent. Miho let out an exasperated sigh. "And these are our team members," Karasuma said in the same polite voice, though she sounded more worn out than she might otherwise. She extended a hand, gesturing introductions. "Doujima Yurika."

Doujima rose from her seat quickly and bowed, blond hair falling in front of her face. "Dozo yoroshiku."

"I'm sure it is, young lady."

Karasuma's face tightened, Sakaki noticed. Michael turned his headphones up, ignoring the conversation. "Sakaki Haruto." Karasuma said, continuing.

Sakaki bowed and murmurred a polite 'hajimemashite' of his own, though privately he thought that this motherly woman couldn't possibly speak the native language and would understand the polite, reserved tone better than she would the actual words he spoke.

"And this is Michael Lee, he's our computer expert and our tactical contact during hunts."

"Take your headphones off," the woman said, turning brown eyes on Michael.

Michael ignored her.

"He's working on case files," Karasuma said. "Excuse him. Everyone, as you know the Director asked me to show Patricia Nye around and introduce her to us all. Solomon sent her after they received word of our puzzling discoveries of Witches turning up dead. She is to be considered a specially assigned agent and to be given all the respect that entails."

"I'd like to say a few words," Patricia said, brown eyes trained on the floor.

"By all means," Karasuma said, bowing and stepping back out of the way to give her access to the center of the small computer workspace where everyone was gathered.

Patricia nodded, brushing graying brown hair back from her face, and looked around the room at the group of them. "I'm a little disturbed that Solomon left a group of kids in charge of an entire country's Witch problem. I really don't understand why I've even been sent out here. I'm going to do a job. I understand that previous special agents have been less than successful in their assignments to Japan, and looking at you all I can understand why. I do not intend to fail Solomon." Her brown eyes outlined the group of them, falling on Karasuma and Doujima, who were leaning against desks side by side.

Sakaki couldn't tell if it was distaste he saw in her eyes, or envy at the younger women's figures, but she snapped her eyes to him. "That _will_ be all."

Hattori, who had been hovering the entire time just outside of the work area, stepped forward and said with a smile, "If you like, Miss Nye, the car has arrived downstairs to take you to your apartment."

"That will be quite nice, thank you Mr. Hattori." The butler assistant, as the Hunters call him, showed 'Miss Nye' back to the elevator.

Once enough time passed for reason, Sakaki started to comment, but Doujima beat him to it. "You've gotta be kidding me? What is Solomon thinking with sending us someone's grandmother as a Hunter?"

"No one seemed to comment too much on it when the Special Agent Hunters were all older men," Karasuma said, unbuttoning her collar and tipping her head towards the ceiling.

Sakaki looked at the lead hunter and rose, keeping his mouth shut, and went to get Karasuma a cup of tea. She looked unduly stressed out for it to be just the new Special Agent.

"If she helps out with figuring this out, I don't care at all. But she gave me a look like she disapproved of my _existence_," Doujima said in a bit of a whine. "And what was that whole speech about understanding why no hunters from Solomon are successful in Japan? Robin was-"

"Leave Robin out of this conversation," Michael said, still typing.

Doujima blinked, turning to look at him with curious eyes. She hopped off the desk she was sitting on and passed Sakaki as he returned with the tea to poke Michael in the shoulder. "How _does_ he hear with those things on?"

"He wears them inside out sometimes," Sakaki said. "Karasuma-san," he said, setting the steaming cup of green tea beside her kneecap. "It's hot." He headed back over to his desk and sat down.

Doujima leaned closer to Michael and moved back quickly, covering her ears.

Karasuma picked up the tea cup and nursed it in both hands with a faint chuckle. "Well I'll be," she said. "When did that start?"

"Whenever I was trying to ignore you all," Michael replied. "You didn't really think I was deaf, did you?"

* * *

Sitting with her knees up to her chest, Robin watched as Amon climbed the hill back to the small encampment where they spent nearly two months on an island paradise. Green eyes watched as he moved with all the conservative grace of a jungle animal. Her teenaged mind supplied that piece of information, she might otherwise have likened him to a well-trained soldier.

He stopped when he saw her, fully dressed, seated on the sand waiting for him. "Robin?"

"You want to go," she said in a quiet voice, not quite meeting his eyes as he climbed to the top of the hill, his shadow falling on her.

He nodded, slowly, not entirely sure how to take these words from her. She seemed, as she often did, older than she had a right to be, and wiser. She looked up to meet his gray eyes with her green ones. There was silence for a long moment, and he felt, as he often did when he stared into her eyes for too long, that he was drowning.

"I do," he said, nodding.

Robin rose to her feet in a fluid, graceful movement. "Then let's go."

"Is it really that easy?" Amon asked, shaking out his wet hair and collecting his things. He pulled on the holster for his gun, and replaced his gun in its holster. He felt Robin's eyes on him, but she made no comment aloud. He pulled on his jacket and checked to be sure that the gloves were still in the pocket.

"I don't really know if it will be easy at all," Robin confessed, folding her hands behind her back. "But you want to go, so we're going."

Amon nodded.

Robin's heart dropped a little, and she looked him up and down, and then around the two of them at the island home they inhabited. She took a last look at the lean-to that they strung together as a team. The fire pit. The mound of dried leaves that had served as her pillow. She turned her eyes to look at the water that welled up nearby and flowed down the rocks to make the pool below.

She nodded as well. Slowly, she lifted a hand to Amon. He looked at her in confusion. "I'm not entirely sure how I got us here, but I don't think I can get us back, together, without having a grip on you."

Amon nodded, again. He thought, momentarily, of Lucifer. The fallen angel. His gray eyes regarded Robin and he stepped over to take her hand. She held up the other one.

Even with wings, he wondered, how will she lift him?

Immediately he chided himself on that score. She got him to safety, she would see him home again. See _them_ home again. He put his other hand in hers and waited, holding his breath.

Robin stared up into Amon's face for a long moment, and he stared back into hers. The sunlight fell between them, and all around… Amon wasn't certain when her eyes unfocused, just slightly, to let him know that she was working magic. Her focus, her concentration, felt as though it remained on him. Her gloved hands clutched his tighter than he thought she should reasonably be able to, and her lips moved in a wordless spell… or maybe, he thought, a silent prayer.

Beneath their feet, the sand heated up. Around them, the air seemed to turn to wind, racing in circles and in waves spreading outwards. Amon looked up at the cloudless sky, and the sun seemed to be getting closer. The air seemed heavy around him, and he looked down to see that their feet were no longer touching the sandy ground of their small camp, but instead they were grazing the tops of the palm tress that surrounded it.

Gray eyes turning quickly back to Robin, Amon found her green eyes were closed. Her bangs floated as though not bound by wind or gravity, and her slightly sun darkened skin looked flushed. Her hands gripped his tightly, as though she was struggling to accomplish this feat of weightless suspension.

He thought back to the Factory escape that they made. To a hundred questions she asked before he even knew enough to care about her… to trust her. As a partner… as a… Her words came racing back to him, from the Raven's Flat escape. _'Amon… You believed in me, right?'_

He had known, looking at her the other night, she was the only way off the island… the only way back to the real world. He just hadn't realized how much he wanted to go back, or that she was doing it all for him. Or… how much she needed him.

Strong hands tightened in smaller gloved ones and Amon looked down into Robin's face. "Robin."

Startled green eyes opened, and for a breathless moment they stopped moving. She looked into his eyes, and he felt the familiar sensation of drowning. He felt her looking into him, as she always did when their eyes met. He could only hope she found what it was that she needed to make her realize this should be easier on her. He only hoped she did not find his doubts… his fear… the same fear that Juliano had…

Amon grinded his teeth together slowly, thinking he'd done the wrong thing until, as though propelled by a rocket, Robin lifted higher and more quickly into the air, dragging him along with a painful jerk of his arms.

Whatever she found this time, he thought, it must have been what she needed.

And then, again, blissful blackness took him.

* * *

"Your visitor again," Hanamura said with a scowl set on her lips, the receiver of the phone dangling from one hand, the other set on her hip disapprovingly. "I really preferred your last delinquent to this new one."

Nagira smirked and took the phone from her. "Yes?"

There was a breathless pause in the office as he listened to Doujima's words, and then he chuckled, causing both Hanamura and Hattori to take a half a step back.

"I'll meet you, if you like. Sounds like a story worth hearing in person."

"Oh no you d-" Hanamura began.

"Ja," Nagira said, hanging up the phone loud enough to cut his secretary off. He looked at her for a moment and then headed over to grab his coat on the way to the door. "I'll be back later this afternoon," he said as he opened the door.

"Just don't make it _tomorrow_ afternoon!" Hanamura called after him. "You have clients and cases, you know!"

The door shut behind him and Harutto ducked his head to go back to his computer screen, adjusting his sleeve a little in the process.

* * *

Of all the places to come back into the world, Amon thought to himself as his eyes shot open, why the hell did it have to be a subway tunnel?

Robin's grip on his hands remained firm, but her body sagged as she lost consciousness, and he pulled her against him to keep her from tumbling onto the third rail.

The third rail…

Turning his head, Amon was even more annoyed to find that the two of them seem to have… materialized, he guessed, on the tracks. He heard the noise of an approaching train. Third strike against this landing. She was really going to have to work on that…

Releasing her hands, he scooped her up quickly and ducked under the nearby platform. The train sped by. Amon set Robin on the ground and shook her shoulders gently, wordlessly. Slowly, she roused, eyes opening in a drowsy manner, and blinked at him. He put a finger to his lips. She nodded.

Giving her a hand off the ground he set her on, Amon motioned her to stay put. The two of them listened, but no more trains sounded as though they were coming. Amon reasoned that the train that passed was probably an express. He moved over to the service ladder and stepped up a rung or two to peer at the station.

Empty. Thankfully, it was empty. Either they missed the rush hour commute, or they were at a remote station.

He ducked back down and motioned Robin to follow him on his way up, and climbed the ladder. A second behind him, Robin followed. As when they reached the island, however, she looked fatigued. Her eyelids drooped closed.

Cursing silently, Amon grabbed her by the wrist as she swayed on her feet. He looked around for a sign to tell him where they were. The writing on the signs was… "English," Amon said aloud, puzzled. He looked at Robin, speaking in Japanese, "Does this mean we're in England? Or is it America?"

Robin shrugged, too tired to speak aloud, and followed Amon towards the stairs as he heads upwards in the directions the city streets, led by the wrist and not really caring, trusting his judgment. Wherever they were, she knew she should not be letting her guard down, but somehow she couldn't quite keep it up. Looking behind them with half-mast eyelids over her green eyes, she wondered if she would ever see the peaceful island again.

Amon did not look back, knowing that it was safe enough back there to ignore. At the top of the stairs, he navigated them through a small terminal and out onto a crowded street. He glanced around, unsure. Robin drifted to a stop at his side and her head dipped forward almost immediately.

He saw what he was looking for. A woman in a uniform who looks to be a police officer. Not the best thing to come out of a subway station looking as lost as they did, and as foreign, Amon noticed as he looked at the people moving around him. Though some were dressed in black, most wore sunglasses, and appeared to be wearing summer clothes. Robin had been right. Maybe it _was_ just summer on the island. People streamed around the two of them, and Amon started to pick a direction before realizing that even in a crowd of people who were paying so little attention, dragging a slender, half-asleep girl down the sidewalk was probably not the best idea. Relenting from the recollection of her recoil when he woke her on the island, he put his arm around her shoulders and guided her off down the street.

Skyscrapers towered over them, and he wished, almost instantly, that they were back in Japan. At his side, he felt Robin settle against him comfortably. He looked down at Robin momentarily, and then back up at where he was leading her. She was sleep walking, at this point. Still not good rest.

Amon's mind raced. He definitely wasn't prepared to show up in a place like this, far from home and any resources he might have at his disposal. In the Factory, he had moved with the flow of things. The stone pushed, they went. When she offered to bring them back, he didn't think about anything other than getting off the island.

Nothing but getting off…

He looked down at her again.

Not even what she may or may not have wanted. That wasn't in his programmed thought pattern. Heaving a silent sigh, Amon kept the two of them walking until he saw a park. As good a place as any to sit down and inventory their resources. His pockets had contained things on the island. The coat, his long shirt, even his pants.

Plus, he thought as he looked down at Robin who was barely walking by now, it would give her a chance to truly rest. Turning them into the park and following the sidewalks carefully, he was surprised to find that was important to him.

* * *

"The next hunt is scheduled for the day after tomorrow, Doujima," Sakaki chided her as she retrieved her coat from the rack and slid it on. "Don't you think you should stay for the briefing? There are only three of us hunters now and-"

"There are four," the disapproving voice of Patricia Nye from behind him said. "And the briefing will be happening tomorrow morning."

Sakaki winced and Doujima lost a little of her energy, but still managed to wink at Haruto. "See, Sakaki? There's no reason for me to stick around if our briefing isn't until tomorrow. I'm going to go visit an old friend and have a cup of tea, is all. Ja ne!"

"Hey, wait a-" Sakaki started, but Doujima was already out the door and on her way to the elevator by the time he managed to get that out.

"Is she always so irresponsible?" Patricia asked in a dour voice as she stepped up beside Sakaki to watch the blond young woman head out.

"Only when we're in the office," Haruto said in an exasperated voice, "She's much different on hunts. Now."

"She used to be like that all the time?" Patricia asked, turning her head to regard him with disapproving brown eyes.

Sakaki remained silent on that score. "Would you like a cup of tea, Miss Nye?"

"Coffee. What is it with Japan and tea?"

Michael, in the background, chuckled and continued typing, headphones blaring loudly, facing outwards. Karasuma looked up from her terminal, rubbed one ear, and said, "It's considered a more refined beverage."

"Refined as compared to what?"

"Why did you push back our briefing?" Karasuma countered, standing from her terminal. It had taken nearly a week to get to this point. For her to get so frustrated with the impolite British woman that she decided to put her foot down. It was great to have the extra help… but so far all Patricia J. Nye had done was to make her team feel on edge, and to give everyone a headache from Michael's backwards headphone wearing.

Sakaki wisely decided that now was the time to go and get drinks for the two women, and Michael's fingers moved faster, if possible, on the keyboard, as though he was determined to stay completely out of the conversation.

"It makes more sense to do the briefing when they will have the information fresh in their minds. Too much time to stew it over and you have to have a second one. Not very efficient."

"It gives them time to look over the witch's abilities and be prepared."

"When I lead hunts-"

"With all respect, Miss Nye, you aren't leading this hunt. I am."

The older woman narrowed her eyes. "This investigation-"

"Will not take place until after the hunt has begun. At which point you have full autonomy. Until that time, however, you have not been given command of the STN-J, and you are not in charge of my team. I will thank you, kindly, to start treating us like the professionals we are."

Silently, Miho prayed that they would live up to her outrage on the hunt. No squabbles between Sakaki and Doujima… no misdirection from her renewed ability… no strange variables that Michael couldn't predict.

The brown eyes of the older woman softened, and a smile quirked on the woman's lips. "I was waiting for one of you to do that. You've all been baring your teeth at me the whole week. I was beginning to think none of you had any spine."

Karasuma blinked. Michael paused his hands over the keyboard. Sakaki spilled the coffee on himself and cursed. "You've… been… waiting…?" Karasuma asked.

"You have to test the pack before you join it," Patricia offered in a much friendlier voice than any she'd used with them since arriving. The matronly, mothering nature seemed much more inviting now as she looked at Miho. "What do you say we clean young Sakaki up and go down to Harry's for a spot of lunch?"


	6. Numbers 1:3

Series: Abs Calamitas

Numbers: 1:3

Anime: Witch Hunter Robin

A/N: This chapter gets tricky, because we get Japanese-speaking Amon and multi-lingual Robin into America. I'm going with the idea that all Solomon Hunters that are trained at Headquarters would have to speak multiple languages, at least Italian and English. And given that some of the screen data in the STN-J office appeared to be in Russian or German or something during the show, I'm going with most of the STN officers being not only highly educated, but also multi-lingual. In this case, Amon is just rusty on his English, and probably looks down on it. So, in this chapter, Japanese is represented in _italics_ during conversation, and is used primarily by Amon.

* * *

Nagira sat down in a booth facing the door and waited. Patience, as his half-brother had taught him, could be a real virtue from time to time. But unlike the dark man himself, Nagira preferred not to exercise his _every_ minute of _every_ hour of _every_ day. He knew, deep down inside, that even Amon couldn't always be patient. He'd seen fear in his half-brother's eyes. Remorse. Regret. Sadness. And once, just once, he saw a flicker of a smile that was _not_ a smirk that reached the dark man's gray eyes.

He stopped thinking about Amon as Doujima entered the café. He let her take stock of the café. The counter, without him sitting at it. The white cloth covered circular tables, also without him sitting at them. Her blue eyes turned at last to the booth and he felt a smile that mirrored her own come to his lips.

Doujima crossed the café, waving the waitress away who started to seat her, and sat down across from Nagira.

"So what's good here?" Nagira asked, perusing the menu with a half interested eye. "I don't come to this side of town very often anymore. Not since- nevermind."

"Not since Amon left," Doujima finished for him.

He looked up to try and catch her eye, but she had the menu between them, and her tone was unreadable. He didn't offer a response.

"I always like the chicken," she offered.

"I think I'll have a sandwich instead," Nagira said, putting the menu down. He had decided on his own meal shortly after he arrived, which had been twenty minutes ago. Waiting was what brought on the thought about patience and…

"You may regret it."

"It's a chance I'm willing to take," Nagira replied. He closed his menu. "Is the office so bad you had to invent this to get away from it?"

"I wouldn't call you a figure of pure invention, would you?" Doujima lowered her menu and he saw that she was grinning at him.

The waitress walked over. "Konnichiwa," the young woman said. "How may I help you?"

"I'll just have a cup of coffee, please," Nagira said.

The waitress nodded, writing it down on the small pad she carried, "Cream or sugar?"

"Sugar, no cream."

"And for you miss?"

Doujima looked at Nagira strangely for his order and smiled at the waitress. "A chicken club sandwich on rye with a side salad and a tall glass of lemonade."

"What kind of dressing for your salad, miss?"

"Vinaigrette, if you have it?"

"Of course miss, sir, I'll be just back with your coffee."

"And even if I did invent a reason, you wouldn't blame me if you met the new woman." Nagira glanced at the nearest patrons, wondering if Doujima really ought to be talking about 'work' in a place like this, but she continued. "It's a ghastly grand mother from England. She stares at me like she disapproves of my boyfriend or something."

Nagira couldn't help but laugh. "Does she even know your boyfriend?"

Doujima had the taste to blush. "_I_ don't even know my boyfriend, how can she?"

Nagira laughed again, louder. The waitress returned with his coffee and the glass of lemonade. He thanked her with a smile as he settled down again, and she headed off to tend to her other customers.

"Then Sakaki started giving me the 'duty speech'." Doujima made a face that Nagira could only assume is supposed to look like a scowling Sakaki, and imitated a low voice, "Doujima-san, we have a briefing. Where are you going?" She tossed her hands in the direction of the bar and sipped her lemonade. "Honestly, what am I supposed to do with these people?"

Nagira chuckled. "Work?" he offers. He emptied a packet of sugar into his coffee and stirred it slowly.

"Mou, not you too," she groaned, but he could see the smile in her eyes as she glared at him. "Better be careful or you'll turn into your secretary."

* * *

Two hours later, still seated on the park bench, Amon felt much more in control of himself, and their surroundings, though nothing had changed. The sun was starting to set, finally, and from a chime clock somewhere in the distance, he knew that it was still early in the evening here. He didn't feel tired yet, but Robin was still sleeping.

He tried to recall how long she slept after they reached the island, and couldn't. He contented himself with the inventory of his pockets that he had done. He thanked whatever foresight he had before the final mission, or paranoia. Three different credit cards. All four of his separate bank cards, including the one registered to the bank in Japan where his Solomon money is stored.

An account he had either empty soon, or never touch again.

Someone, either from the STN-J or from Solomon, or Nagira, would be watching it for activity. He wondered how much information could be gotten from his old apartment. He quickly concluded that very little could be known about him from those rooms. He hadn't really made a home anywhere since he left headquarters the first time. Part of his training as a hunter.

With the setting sun came a less than welcome evening breeze. Robin shifted, unused to a temperature shift like this after so much time in a perpetual tropical sunscape, and pulled her coat around herself, turning in towards Amon. He might have scowled, except his eyes are watching the crowd as it changed over from a daytime to a nighttime one.

Out went the afternoon joggers and the families with dogs to cars and apartments and public transportation. No one came to visibly replace them, but Amon could_feel_ the replacements, like bugs on his skin. The evening lurkers of the park. The homeless people, the muggers… Gently, he shook Robin with the arm around her shoulders until she roused, again, from her near dead sleep.

"Amon?"

"We need to get up. We'll get a hotel."

Robin nodded, still not entirely awake, and followed Amon to his feet, grateful for the steadying arm he kept around her shoulders. Her knees felt weak. Her head was spinning, and the growing darkness of the park was somehow frightening. A chill breeze ruffled her hair and skirts. Robin turned her face to the sleeve of Amon's dark jacket.

An uneasy nausea settled in the pit of her stomach, and Robin realized she was hungry… but the thought of food pained her. Turning green eyes from Amon's jacket, she looked around the shadows growing beneath the trees, and saw eyes looking back at her. She forced her brain to concentrate on keeping pace with Amon so they could leave the park quicker, and before long, they were out of the gates she walked blindly through earlier that day.

As they reached the sidewalk and Amon turned them towards the nearest corner, she felt a surge of power from inside the park. "Amon," Robin said, leaning back to look behind his shoulders at the park.

"I know," he replied, tightening the arm around her shoulders. "We're in a vulnerable situation. We can't afford to get involved. And you need to rest."

Another surge of power sent a crackle of lightning across the cloudless sky overhead. Robin stopped walking. "When _will_ we be able to afford getting involved?" she asked him, looking up with confused green eyes. "Amon, no one knows we are here."

"Yet," he said.

"I want to go and see if it's a witch who needs to be stopped," Robin said. "I need to know."

The sway in her voice, and the tremble in her shoulders either give away exhaustion or vehemence. Amon decided not to test her to find out which it was. Just to see could do nothing, if they were really just seeing. STN offices didn't normally attack Seeds without a demonstrated power… Witches… usually had to do something to come up on the map.

Making a swift turn, Amon directed them back towards the low wall of the park and boosted her over it before hurdling it easily. Robin stumbled down to her feet on the other side, but regained her footing and closes her eyes, turning her head and sniffing the air until she could properly sense the lashes of power that were coming from the Witch being hunted.

"This way," she said, tucking both hands deep in her pockets and balling her hands into fists to maintain her grip on consciousness.

The set of her shoulders as she led the way through the dimly lit forest of the park told Amon that it was determination alone that kept her trudging. The two of them neared a clearing and Robin stopped, crouching behind a bush, hiding in the summer foliage. Amon follows suit, and reaches through the bush to open it enough so that they could see through at the hunt taking place in the park.

* * *

"The target's name is Chida Yoshiki, age twenty-two. A former Seed being watched closely by Solomon," Michael typed quickly on his keyboard and the information on the Witch came up on the screen. "Both his parents were Witches, and were taken from him when he was very young, hunted by former STN-J members."

"Wow, he's handsome," Doujima said in a characteristic show of childishness not entirely native to her after revealing she was a double-agent for Headquarters during the Factory incident.

"Do you always have to say things like that?" Sakaki said, rounding on her.

Karasuma sighed and slapped her manila folder on the desk loudly. "Enough. We are in the middle of a briefing." Since the incident with the infiltration of Raven's Flat, they had been more careful with the filing system, but Miho still found it reassuring to be able to see the data on paper sometimes, especially when she had to recall it quickly.

"Please continue, Michael," Patricia said, sitting in what was formerly Amon's seat. None of the STN-J members mentioned this to the British woman, though it grated on their nerves.

After two months, it was enough to think that at the very least, this time neither Amon nor Robin were coming back. On Robin's part, it would be foolish to do such a thing. And Amon… he led the attack into the Factory, and could very easily have been branded a traitor by the organization. Best for all involved if both, then, stayed far away. Still. It didn't help Michael's mood to see the outsider sitting in Amon's seat. It was another reminder that things would never go back to the nearly idyllic time when Robin first came to them. Ever.

"And smart," Michael continued. "Chida entered Tokyo University straight out of school." Doujima started to comment, but Sakaki gave her a near disgusted look. Michael hurried on. "He was near the top of his class until a classmate got a nervous feeling before a test and accused him of cheating on an exam." He typed more and another image comes up on the screen. This one of a young woman. "Inoue Yukari."

"I read about that," Karasuma said. "She went missing from her dorm, but it was pushed to the back burners when the Olympic season came up."

"Bad press for the country is usually pushed to the back burners. Especially at a university as prestigious as Tokyo U.," Patricia said. "There was a similar case of disappearances at Cambridge when I first joined Solomon. The news had dropped the story because it was unsolved, and by the time we captured the Witch responsible, the only thing they were printing on the story was a one-line comment in the opinion columns about whoever the victim was."

"Solomon HQ conducted the investigation into the girl's disappearance alongside the police, using foreign agents due to our own busy schedule," Michael went on. It was how he has taken to referring to any and all of the times they were all bleeding in hospitals or broken by Zaizen in the past year. "It's back on the table now because other students from Chida's classes have started to disappear mysteriously."

"And," Kosaka said, speaking up for the first time since the briefing started, "several of the missing students have come up as Seeds from Solomon's genome list."

"Making this a potential case of Witch destroying Witch," Karasuma finished.

"I doubt he knows they're Seeds," Doujima said, "what's his Craft anyway?"

"Didn't I mention that?" Michael said, looking up from his terminal to see blank stares as his answer. "Chida Yoshiki is a strong telepath."

"Telepath?" Sakaki asked. "You mean… what do you mean by that?"

Karasuma was the one who answered. "He reads people's minds."

"And controls them," Michael added. "After the death of his parents, he was sent to live with grandparents who were very frugal and had saved a lot of money. A few years after he came to live with them, they bought a much larger house and started to spend what amounts to a lifetime's worth of saving to make a small fortune."

"How much are we talking here?" Patricia asked, arms folded and her brow furrowed.

"Somewhere on the upside of six billion yen," Michael replied, stilling his hands on the keyboard and leaning forward against the desk to stare at Chida Yoshiki's picture on his display screen.

"His powers must've emerged earlier than even Solomon expected," Doujima said, sobering at the thought of using that much money due to mind control.

"There was no overt change in the grandparents' behavior, Solomon would have seen that immediately," Michael replied.

"Which means he's really good," Sakaki said. He leaned back in his chair.

"Which means this is really dangerous," Doujima said.

"For one of us," Karasuma said, turning to look at Patricia.

Sakaki scowled as he caught her meaning, and folded his arms on his chest. Michael nodded quietly. "Which one? Any of us could turn a gun on someone," Doujima said, a little confused.

"For me," Patricia said. "Well, for you lot, really. I'd be the one he'd take over and attack you all with likely."

"Provided he can even do that sort of thing," Sakaki added.

"Either way. We'll just have to make sure that doesn't happen," Karasuma said in a resolute voice.

Michael arched a brow but remains silent. What hunters decided to do… he shook his head. "And how do you plan on that?" He blinked and turned his head to look at Patricia, who had a wry smile on her face at having said the same words in time with him.

"According to the files Michael gave us, it appears that only the short-term memory of his targets are affected. Classmates forgetting exams, grandparents spending money… only in cases of long exposure to him do people experience long-term memory affects," Doujima said, reading down the page of characteristics on her screen.

Patricia's look remained skeptical.

"So if you simply spend enough time not thinking about Patricia he won't know she's with you?" Michael frowned slightly. "That doesn't seem to be the best plan to me…"

"It's really the only way any of us know to go about this though," Sakaki said, looking around the briefing room table for nods of agreement. "The idea that there are Witches out there that use people without them knowing…"

"We'll travel to the campus area and begin surveillance in half an hour." Karasuma interrupted, checking her watch. "Doujima and I will take a car, Sakaki will take his motorcycle. It's best if we are unaware of how Patricia gets there."

The ring of hunters nodded, and Michael stood, "Don't forget your communicators. I'll be putting her on a different frequency from the three of you, so your only contact will be through me."

* * *

Four black-jacketed STN hunters stood at the corners of the clearing, two with guns trained on the Witch in question. The Witch appeared oddly serene to the two watchers hiding in the bushes.

"Gilario Olson!" The tallest of the hunters called out, stepping just into the streetlight as the sun set behind the tall trees of the park.

The Witch lifted his head, placid dark eyes turning towards the speaker. "You are addressing the proper person," he said, voice steady.

"By order of Solomon Headquarters, you are being hunted," the American said. Gilario shrugged. "May your death atone for the people you murdered."

The two hunters holding guns fired them, and Robin was halfway to her feet when Amon's hand grabbed her arms to restrain her. "_Do you speak English_?" he whispered to her.

"Yes," she said, green eyes brimming with kindness.

"_All I made out was 'murdered', these must be Americans, they mumble even when they shout. Watch for longer, see what he does_."

Still looking anxious, Robin nodded.

In the clearing of the park, the bullets seemed to hit a wall that was made of electricity. Gilario's placid face tilted with a smile. "How can I be a murderer when I never touched a gun?" the man asked. The bullets flew backwards towards the shooters. "All those people died of gunshot wounds."

"Like that!" the tall speaker shouted. A burst of wind sent the bullets flying away, and the two now-obvious Craft users stepped forward into the light.

Robin's heart thudded in her chest loudly enough that she felt she might lose consciousness again, and she put a hand on the ground to steady herself. This Witch… this Gilario… one of her kind… one of her blood…

Amon's presence beside her reminded her of reality. The sorrow of the power of strong Witches… from the battle, it was obvious that he was very strong. And his face had been so placid… so calm…

Her other hand lifted to her chest, and she felt a stab of pain. She closed her eyes and looked away from the battle. She turned her head towards Amon, and waited. "_It won't be safe to move again until it's over_," Amon said to her, letting the bush close again in front of the two of them, cutting off their view of the Witch's demise.

"_It's never going to be safe_," Robin said softly. "_Not here_."

* * *

"I'm in position," Sakaki said, turning to smile at the female newsstand attendant. His mind wandered, just a little, to Doujima leaving the office the afternoon before. And their fight during the meeting that morning…

Since he found out she betrayed them, he couldn't trust her anymore. With Robin… somehow Robin's betrayal was different. Robin was more innocent. Robin was later hunted. But Doujima… she had no excuse. And not to tell anyone… even him who she-

"Karasuma and Doujima are on the far side of the common area. No sign of the target yet."

The noise of Michael switching frequencies was soft, but Sakaki could hear it loud and clear. He had paid special attention to one particular lecture of his hunter mentor at Solomon HQ when he had said that nothing would aide him more in hunting than his five senses. They would support him even when his Craft failed him.

Sakaki snorted. His Craft.

He couldn't light things on fire. He couldn't make anything explode or the earth move… he couldn't see insightful details with his hands…

He could barely roll a pencil across a desk.

He picked a magazine at random and smiled at the young woman, "How much is this one?"

She gave him a funny look. "For your girlfriend?" her face fell a little.

Sakaki looked at his choice and almost kicked himself in the head. Some great master of detail he was… he had picked out a girl's magazine. "Ano… no, my sister. She asked me to get it for her, but told me to check how much it was first. Our parents have us on a very strict allowance here."

The girl's smile came back a little and she quoted him the price.

"Doujima just saw the target enter the square. Prepare to follow."

"Of course," he said to Michael.

The girl laughed. "She must really like that magazine if you're paying that much for it. What happened to the budget?"

"Her boyfriend just broke up with her," Sakaki said, feeling a little dumb. "I'm trying to be a nice guy." He fished money out of his pocket and handed it to the newsstand attendant. Just in case something like this happened he had thought better than to have all his money in his wallet.

The attendant wrote down a number on a piece of paper, the back of his receipt, and tucked it into the bag with the magazine. "You're really sweet," she said, winking at him. "Give me a call sometime."

Sakaki groaned inwardly. How good would it look for him to be reading this walking after the target? "Maybe I will," he said, glancing over the magazines again and picking one more his style. "This too, please."

The attendant lifted a brow, but took the money that he offered her. Sakaki tucked the magazine away in the bag and offered her a smile and a wave before heading away from the newsstand. "Which way, Michael?"

"Done flirting with the news girl then?"

"Shut up," Sakaki said with a scowl.

"Head towards the western end of the lawn. Karasuma thinks he may be heading towards the main gate. Ah, he's walking quickly, you may have to jog to get there first."

"Roger," Sakaki said, taking off at a jog, the weight of his pistol under his jacket reassuring. It would be more reassuring with Amon to back them up, he thinks, but only just. If Amon were to be taken control of… Or if Robin…

He tried not to think of it.

"Turn right at the next intersection, Sakaki, then take the turn one building down towards the southwest. You'll reach the open area beyond the main gate before the target."

"Hai," Sakaki said quickly, hurdling a stone railing and falling farther than expected. He recovered quickly and dashed down the appointed alley. "He's not getting past me."

Robin was dozing again when it finally grew quiet. The hairs on the back of Amon's neck stood up, and he shook her slightly, but she just leaned farther forward over her knees where she was crouching. Silently, Amon turned.

But there was nothing behind them. The wind rustled the trees, and Amon looked down at Robin with a slight shake of his head. They could wait a little longer. She could rest until the area was quieter before the two of them move.

Keeping his arm around her shoulders, he kept his mind off of the hunt they had just witnessed. The hunters in their black jackets had made quite a racket, and the animals in the bushes around them had been scared off. The bushes had rustled alarmingly, and the gun wielding hunters had turned towards their hideout, he could make out through the leaves of the bush, but for whatever reason, luck, he hated to admit, they had not been discovered.

Luck, he thought with a scowl, had an unfortunate tendency of giving out when it was most needed.


	7. Numbers 1:4

Numbers 1:4

Series: Witch Hunter Robin

A/N: Amon's first line in italics is once again in Japanese, after that we're out of our strange Japanese-English problem with the languages. Keep in mind, they are in America, the STN-J is still in Japan and all those characters are speaking English. Hopefully this was well established in the last chapter and is not too jarring here.

* * *

Doujima followed the target down towards the Main Gate of the University campus, and frowned. If someone didn't stop him soon, he might make it out… he might go on to kill again.

Normally things like that felt much more detached from her. It wasn't in her nature to worry about things like that on a normal basis. And after Amon and Robin left… for wherever… with Sakaki back on hunts, she hadn't felt the need to think about such things. It hadn't crossed her mind to think that she might be attacked by one, or drawn in by one.

But this Chida Yoshiki… her first reaction had been to be attracted to him. To think that he looked like a nice young man.

The type of nice young man, she thought to herself as she followed him down the steps, that would probably kill her and dump her body into a sewer. And what Sakaki said at the table in the briefing room… Witches no one knew about that were using people's minds against them… She reached a hand down to her purse and felt the gun inside it.

Nonchalantly, she flipped open the top of her purse and spoke softly, "I'm going to begin the operation," she said to Michael.

"Be careful, Doujima," Michael replied. Nodding to herself, she lifted her eyes from the pavement in front of her and moved more quickly after the figure that she knew to be Chida Yoshiki. "Sakaki is coming around from the alley to your right. Try and chase him in there. Karasuma is at the gate moving towards you."

Doujima didn't reply, watching Chida as he turned, almost in slow motion, to look at her. She felt her heartbeat speed up in her chest. She recalled her first reaction to him, and felt it reinforced. _He __**was**__ handsome._

Chida smiled to her, and waved her over.

Blinking, Doujima looked to the side and then pointed at herself. Chida, through the crowd, nodded. Her heartbeat sped up even more as she approached the young man, her hand holding the top of her open purse. She wasn't sure why she was walking that way. She had to, to begin the operation, but so blatantly…

"I just noticed you following me," his smooth voice said. The young man offered her a kind smile as she approached. "And then when I saw your face… well…" he trailed off and pressed his lips in a firmer smile. "I knew it was my lucky day."

_And how lucky would that be?_ Doujima thought, feeling the weight of her gun in her purse.

* * *

It was too late to wait to go find a hotel any longer. The sun had been down nearly an hour, from what Amon could tell, and the streetlights turned on a few minutes ago as the dusk light faded from the sky.

"Robin." He said in a loud enough voice that she stirred. He got to his feet, putting an arm around her waist to straighten her up as well. "_It's time to __**go**_."

Nodding sleepily, Robin let Amon lead her out of the park, and didn't even pay attention to more than the motion of her booted feet on the pavement. It all looked the same. It all felt the same… the rush of humanity and the dirt it left behind. There was some fresh air in the park, but beyond it the stench of what they came back to permeated the atmosphere.

The corruption of Witches. The cruelty of Solomon. The close-mindedness.

The doors of the hotel lobby opened automatically, and Amon led them over to the front desk. A polite looking older lady stepped up to the counter and climbed up onto a step stool to regard the two of them. "How can I help the two of you?" she asked.

Robin's eyes focused on the counter in front of her instead of her feet. A motel. They were in a motel.

"A double, please," Amon said in accented English.

The older woman nodded and moved her hands about the desk, doing things with some papers. "You two just get into the city?"

Amon stiffened, and Robin nodded. "It was a long flight."

"They all are," the older woman said. She set the papers down in front of them, and Amon loosened his grip on Robin to begin to fill them out. "The two of you came in from overseas?" She nodded to herself. "I can always pick those out. We don't get many foreigners here. We're such a small motel that they usually like to stay in the big expensive ones. There's no on-line website to go along with our reservations, so no one knows about us."

"Sometimes the best advertising is word of mouth," Amon said, the pen moving quickly on the paper he was filling out.

Robin did her best to stand quietly beside him, tried not to look confused or as tired as she really was. She could only be sure that she didn't look drugged, because the woman didn't mention that about her. "Your friend doesn't seem to be quite as awake as you do," the woman said.

"She has a problem with planes," Amon replied, continuing to fill out the form that suddenly seemed never ending. He reached the end, finally, and took out his wallet, removing one of his bank cards that matched the information he had put onto the form, and slid the collection of things across the counter to the older woman.

"I'll put you in a comfortable room then, and she can sleep herself out." The woman took the paperwork, checked it over, and made an imprint of the card that he'd handed her. "Do you know how long you'll be staying?"

Amon considered this for a moment. Robin caught herself from falling asleep on her feet and offered the woman a smile. "Long enough to see the sights, I'm sure," she said in a soft voice.

"In that case," the woman said, reaching for something behind the counter. Amon tensesd but the woman's hand returned with a brochure. "This has a map of the area that may be helpful to the two of you. The landmarks are all pointed out, and even the ATMs in the area. I'm sure one will take your foreign bank card."

"We should really be getting to bed," Amon said, taking the card that the older woman slid back across the counter to him and replacing it in his wallet. Once he tucked it into his pocket, he took the brochure from her.

"We've got a luggage cart, if you've got anything to take up to your room," the woman offered.

"No," Amon said, thinking quickly. "Our bags were routed to the wrong airport. It will take a few days for them to arrive."

The woman made an annoyed face. "I've been down that road before," she said sympathetically. "Well, if you need anything, don't be afraid to ring the front desk. I'm Margret, and I'm the manager. I live in the building, so don't be afraid to have the desk clerk ring me if you have any problems."

Amon bowed, and Robin followed suit. "Thank you," Amon said, taking the keys from Margret and putting a hand on Robin's elbow to lead the drowsy young woman up to the room.

* * *

"It appears the Chida is trying to lure Doujima-shi into the alleyway towards Sakaki," Michael's voice announced in amusement over the headset. Crouching with his back to the darkened wall of the building in the back corner of the alley, Sakaki felt his blood pressure go up.

'There she goes again, getting herself into trouble stupidly,' Sakaki thought to himself.

Karasuma's voice lent a breath of reason to the situation. "That will give me time to make my approach behind them," she said. Her cool voice was like a choker on Sakaki's temper, and he relaxed a little as he slid his gun from the holster where it rested at that small of his back under his jacket. He dropped the two magazines on the ground silently and waited.

"One hundred meters and closing on Sakaki's position."

The familiar sensation of his muscles tensing at the approach of a Witch signaled Sakaki's attention to the two conversing voices echoing down the alleyway towards him. "I think we took a wrong turn, coming down here," Doujima's voice said, loud enough to carry back to his hidden position.

A third pair of footsteps could be heard behind the pair of them. Sakaki held his breath, waiting. Overhead there was a noise on the fire escape above him.

"No wrong turn at all," Chida's voice replied. "I wanted to be alone with you for a minute." A chuckle resounded in the echoing space of the alley. "It's only fair, since you're trying to kill me."

"Michael, I can't commence the operation," Karasuma said in the headset. "I might hit Yurika."

Peering out from behind the garbage bin where he was hiding, Sakaki saw Karasuma's problem. Doujima was in direct line of sight between Chida and Karasuma. He, however, had no such problem. Making a quick decision, he pushed away from the wall and rolled onto his knees, taking quick aim and firing at the witch before anyone could get hurt.

"Down!" he shouted through his communicator.

The snapped command in their ears, both women ducked quickly. Doujima ripped her arm from the grip that Chida had her in, and the bullets Sakaki fired blew holes in the head and neck of the Witch in question, splattering blood forward onto Doujima's crouching body. She made a quick move to the side as Chida Yoshiki's lifeless cadaver fell forward, and there was a heavy thud as it hit the dirty alley ground.

Immediately on her feet, Doujima stomped her way down the alley towards Sakaki. Standing, he checked the clip of his gun, and then nearly dropped it when Doujima's angry hand slapped him across the face. "You're so wreckless!" she shouted. "You could've hit me!"

"Yurika," Karasuma said in a soft voice, kicking the bleeding body over to look at the angles of the bullet wounds. Her head turned to look at the blood that splattered beyond where Doujima's body had blocked it. "There's no way either of these shots would've hit either of us. Sakaki was shooting from ground level."

"How could he know that?" Doujima demanded. "I don't think there's any way to be sure what a bullet will do! What if the Witch had a steel plate in his head?"

Growling, Sakaki pushed past Doujima and headed towards the body, ignoring her protests. If there was one thing he _had_ learned from Amon, it was that women were always going to get hysterical around bullets. Especially close ones. Robin seemed to be the exception, at first. Even Orbo, which disarmed her, when it was fired nearby, didn't seem to affect her.

Of course the Witch Hunter rounds had put a dent in her unshakeable nerve, but even Sakaki had to admit that he would feel the same in those circumstances. Hunted by a partner…

"I practice at the shooting range three days a week," Sakaki replied to her finally, standing next to Karasuma. "Better call the CTs, Michael."

The noise of the ladder from the fire escape lowering alerted the three hunters, and they all looked up to see Patricia climbing down, her own dark jacket hanging heavy on her shoulders. "Well I can see that for all the squabbling," the older woman said, "at least you truly function as a team during a hunt."

"Of course," Karasuma said. To Sakaki, she sounded relieved to be able to say that. "It's our differences that make us such a good team."

"The Containment Team is on their way," Michael announced.

Doujima scowled at Sakaki, "I still can't believe you didn't follow protocol! You're supposed to announce that you're beginning the maneuvers before you start shooting, so everyone knows to get out of the way."

"If I-"

Patricia interrupted, "So the Witch would know that too? You were in very little danger, being under six feet tall. He was nearly on his stomach on the concrete back there, which is lucky for you, because you were reaching for your own gun and I don't think you even noticed it."

Doujima just blinked, and started to talk. The headlights of a large, dark van brightened the alleyway, and they all shielded their eyes to be sure that it was the right people. One thing that could be said for the Factory replacements, the STN operated CT squads were much more prompt. What waiting around the STN-J did now was usually only because of Michael's phone connection with the outside line required to connect to the CT communication network.

Karasuma made a face at Doujima. "You're going to have to take that jacket off before you get into your car," she said, heading past the blond woman to speak to the CT team leader about the cadaver.

"What about my jacket?" Doujima protested loudly, sliding the dark material off her shoulders. "Gross! Sakaki!"


	8. Numbers 1:5

Series: Abs Calamitas

Numbers: 1:5

Anime: Witch Hunter Robin / Abs Calamitas

A/N: Italicized and in ""s means they are speaking in Japanese. As per usual. Wish me luck, I'm taking a train to Chicago tonight.

* * *

The sleep of the dead greeted Robin as soon as she curled up on the motel mattress, still dressed in all her clothes. Amon watched her enviously for nearly an hour before he decided it was safe enough to clean the island grit and park dirt from his own clothes and body, and headed for the bathroom to shower. As he was stripping down from his many layers of dark clothes, he hesitated for a moment, almost afraid to be naked so close to Robin. But the better part of his mind reasoned that there was little difference in naked on an island beach and naked in a motel bathroom, for all the closeness it afforded to two separate people.

And if she was staring on the island… well, she wasn't, was she?

The warm water was nowhere near as pleasant, he found, as the water of the warm ocean, and the white tile was not as firm or reassuring as the white sand of the beach. But it was more familiar, he insisted to his mind. The mundane world was much more real than the island they flew from.

He chided himself for indulging in the fantasy of that. There was no flight. The two of them left the island, but much as their entrance to the place where the island was, their exit was just as easily explained. The Craft of any Witch was based in the mind of the Witch. A good Witch… if such a thing could exist… if Robin could be such a thing… would be no different from a bad Witch, in that regard. The bad Witch lacked control because of some need to compensate for the powerlessness of the human condition. Contrarily, he reasoned, the control Robin had over her powers was through her faith. In God, in herself… and in him.

Faith in him.

_'Amon… You believed in me, right?'_

That he experienced the sensation of flight was just a manifestation of her Craft, an attempt of his own mind to fill in the gaps where logic could shed no light… or perhaps, and a dark flicker in his mind suggested this to be the truest of his thoughts, it was not fancy or imagination or Craft, but the simple truth. Perhaps what wings were needed simply spread in their flight from such a place, imaginary or no.

The water grew cold, and Amon let the chilling water pelt his skin. Reality would have its entrance into thoughts. Reality would hold sway. Whatever happened in the past, as he told Robin, must stay there. Let the island be a part of memory, and let the clean white plastic of the shower stall and the cold white tile floor of the bathroom become the true present.

* * *

"He actually _shot_ at me!" Doujima fumed as she sat in Harry's, a sweet, carbonated beverage between her spread fingers on the thickly varnished bar top. The Harry's proprietor cleaned a glass a few chairs over from her. She pointed with a gloved finger accusingly thrust at the table Sakaki sat at across the room from where she was.

"He was shooting at you? You don't appear to be harmed," Master said.

"My jacket is ruined. It has to go to the cleaners. Do you know how hard it is to explain where I got a jacket like that, and where the blood came from?"

"No harder than it is for the rest of us, Yurika," Karasuma said, peering out from her own thoughts to comment.

Michael strode in, glanced at Doujima as she flopped herself across the bar, and decided to take a seat at the small table where Sakaki was sitting. "Cheer up, Haruto-san," Michael said, waving to Harry in greeting. "Doujima will realize how much nicer it is to be alive and whole than to have to take a jacket to the cleaners soon enough."

"I didn't do anything wrong," Sakaki replied. "They would've turned guns on each other."

Patricia, seated a decent distance from Karasuma and Doujima at the bar, sipped her English-style tea and set the cup down. "It was an excellent display of marksmanship, if you ask me," she said. "And a good way to save your team from peril." She turned accusing eyes on Doujima. "What were you doing following a Witch into a dark alley?"

Doujima straightened in righteous indignation, lifting a hand to begin her response, and then stopped. "I… I don't know," she said. "I had just begun the operation… and then he turned and started talking to me… I don't know what I was thinking, but I reached for my purse, where my gun was…"

"There, see?" Patricia said, picking up her tea and drinking the end of it. When Harry approached, she lifted a hand and fished her wallet out of her hand bag. "Haruto Sakaki did the right thing."

As she said these words, sounding like a declaration or a jury sentence, Michael and Karasuma nodded. Angrily, Doujima grabbed her purse, threw down a few bills for her drink, and stalked out of the restaurant.

"Hey, Doujima," Karasuma started.

"Let her cool off for a while, she'll get over herself eventually," Patricia said.

Sakaki glanced at Michael, whose face looked skeptical. He took in a deep breath and got to his feet. "I'll go."

Patricia chuckled. "Mind you don't get too slapped around," she said, moving over to sit closer to Karasuma. "On second thought, Master Harry, I will take that refill."

Rolling his eyes, Sakaki shoved his hands into his pockets and headed out the front door of the restaurant, glancing up and down the street for Doujima, or her car. Her car still sat parked, empty, where she parked it. He took a few stepped towards it and jumped when he found Doujima leaning against a corner of the wall, staring up at the night sky.

"Doujima-shi?" Sakaki asked, feeling a little surprised and confused to find her still in the area. Usually when she stalked out like that, she ran away.

"You all turned on me in there," Doujima replied, her chin ducked low to her chest, eyes obscured by her thick blond bangs. "Even that old woman."

Sakaki took a step and leaned against the wall close to her, almost brushing his jacket with hers. "You should know I would never shoot you," Sakaki said. "Or Karasuma. We've been through too much… we're a team."

"If I hadn't ducked…"

"Part of trust is knowing your teammates," Sakaki said. "I'm an almost perfect shot, and you and Karasuma have fast reflexes. You've got to trust me to do my job, just like I trust the two of you to do yours."

"I don't need you lecturing me on what we need to be a team, Sakaki. We're already a team."

"Then why don't you tell me what's really on your mind, mm?"

Doujima lifted her eyes to look at Sakaki. "I got stuck," she said in a wavering voice. "I thought that if I concentrated on my first thought from this morning… if I could just hold onto that thought, he wouldn't know. But he did."

"Everyone's been under the influence of a witch before, Doujima," Sakaki said. "The One Eye was mine… I felt the same way." He stood, getting off the wall, suddenly feeling uncomfortable having this talk with her outside in the dark. "Ask Karasuma… I'm sure she's got a story like that too."

"Sakaki," Doujima said, lifting a hand as he headed over to his motorcycle.

He glanced over his shoulder at her, offering a rare smile. "Hai, Doujima?"

"Be careful."

His smile crumpled into something more like confusion, and he nodded, continuing on his way to his bike.

* * *

Waking, mid-afternoon, Robin stretched luxuriously and turned over. Sleep still clung to the edges of her vision, exhaustion to her joints. "Ne," she thought aloud, staring at her black-clad knees, "is this ever going to get any easier?"

The door opened, and Robin tensed expectantly. Could it be…

Amon entered, and she relaxed. "Finally awake," he commented. He carried a white plastic bag, which he set down on the small table in the room, and headed over to his own bed, sitting down and turning on the television. How many times had he done this, Robin wondered, since she went to sleep?

"What day is it?" she asked.

"Friday," he said. "You've been asleep for almost two days. I thought it would be better to let you sleep yourself out instead of trying to force you to eat. There's food on the table."

The images on the television were all in English… and as Amon turned to the news, Robin spoke up. "We're in America, then?" Robin asked.

"For the moment," Amon said. "We're in New York. I'm working on getting passports so that we can move on from here. Somewhere we won't stick out so much and look so foreign."

Robin contemplated that. "Amon… you speak Italian, don't you?" He nodded, watching the news channel he'd turned on with avidly interested gray eyes. "We could always go to Italy. I speak the language, and since you do…"

"You should eat something," Amon said. "I've considered Italy, but I'm not sure if that's the best idea. We can't be sure how you'd be received by Solomon Headquarters at this point… and if Zaizen sent a report about the STN-J, then I'm considered anathema."

Rising from her bed, Robin shrugged out of her jacket and crossed to the table, feeling weak from malnourishment after so long asleep, and a little dizzy from her recent experiences. "Juliano won't order another hunt on me," she said, sitting and opening the plastic bag to find some Japanese noodles and a soda that looked at once wonderfully familiar and strange. "Not unless I lose control of myself."

She lifted the top of the plastic container, and the scent was reassuring, again, and disconcerting at the same time. A meal of paradox.

"He won't have to order it then," Amon said, turning the volume on the television set down slightly to watch her as she ate, as though he wanted to be sure that she did. "If you turn into that… I'll kill you myself before anyone else knows."

Robin snapped the chopsticks free and began eating her meal slowly. "I know," she said with a slight smile, "you're my warden."

"Don't forget," Amon said, "Juliano is not all of Solomon."

The thought had a sobering affect on the young Witch, and Robin popped the top of the soda, taking a sip from it before she bothered to think on that too much. There were indeed other members of Solomon, higher ups… those who even Juliano would not admit to putting trust in. People who could, therefore, not be trusted not to act out against her.

And they had reason to do so… to 'act against her'… to hunt her. She was, she realized, the epitome of what they stood against for more than a thousand years. The proof needed to believe differently than what man would like to. "Margaret asked about you," Amon said, an uncharacteristic offer of needless communication. "I said we were going to take a bus tour of the city tomorrow, but we're going to the library."

"What are we looking for?" Robin asked, continuing her meal.

"Anything regarding disturbances in Japan… unusual deaths, disappearances. If Solomon HQ was going to start looking for us, they would start with the people we knew there."

Robin's hand tightened on the can she reached for just before he spoke. "Karasuma… Doujima…"

"Not just the STN-J members," Amon replied. "Anyone we knew that they knew of."

"Anyone…" Robin trailed off. She didn't know many people. "Nagira… Touko."

Amon nodded. "We can't check too closely, it might tip our location to them."

Setting down her chopsticks, Robin lifted a napkin to her lips to clean her face. "Nagira… he was opposing Solomon… surely if they find him…"

"He is probably the safest of all. Nii-san was doing those things since he was in college." Amon considered for a moment. "I will try contacting him."

"No," Robin said. "If you contact Nagira, the others will know too. It's probably best if none of them know about our whereabouts at all."

"He can be surprisingly tight-lipped," Amon said, in a non-committal tone of voice.

* * *

Seated across from Doujima again, Nagira wondered wryly when he could start calling this dating. Hanamura already was, and she seemed angry about his betrayal of 'the delinquent girl'. He sipped his tea quietly and listened as she expounded on the latest nearly failed 'demonstration', as she had taken to calling Hunts.

He also wondered what made Doujima think he wanted to hear of success in Hunts, when Witches were people just as the two of them were, to him. Seeds were people. Witches were people. The only difference was a set of abilities that he himself didn't have access to. He'd been attacked by Witches… but he'd been in just as many street fight brawls and shoot outs with humans as he had life-threatening encounters with Witches.

The ink on that page in his book was eternally gray, and still drying.

He should've been a Seed himself. Should've been…

A smile came unbidden to his lips. His name, just like Amon's, was in the Solomon mainframe. His, thankfully or not, was only listed as 'related to a Witch', but he knew that Amon was considered a Seed. 'Like it or not, Amon,' he thought to himself, ignoring Doujima's prattling on about the Hunt, 'your blood was thicker than mine.'

He took out a cigarette and lit it, feeling an old wound worrying him. Not that it made any difference… his mother had been frail. Amon's mother was a Seed. Both women were dead.

Lifting a hand to the waitress, he paid for his own food and got to his feet. "If you'll excuse me, I've got case work to get done."

Doujima blinked, looking at him in confusion. "Nagira…"

"Not all of us have the luxury of an employer with such deep pockets."

At least, Nagira thought to himself, she had the decency to feel guilty about not being self-employed, and basically independently wealthy with the salary Solomon handed out to its hunters. He didn't feel bad making Doujima's expression sober, forcing her to pay attention to what she was doing. He pulled his coat on and prepared to head out of the restaurant when her hand grabbed his sleeve.

"Nagira-san," she said softly, staring at her cup of coffee.

"Ah?" He replied, looking down at her in confusion.

"Don't go," she said softly, fingers tightening in the sleeve of his coat. "You're the only person I can talk to about this," she said. "I know it's not fair to you… I know what it is… but I have to talk to someone."

"Who nominated me?" Nagira replied, about to pull his sleeve from her hand.

"Amon did."

He froze. Even a thousand miles apart, potentially with the distance of life and death between them, his half-brother's name was enough to make him pause. Did Yurika know where…? Why would she lie about asking for information, if she knew, he asked himself, unwilling to believe her capable of further treachery after the lesson she learned from the other STN-J members.

"When?" he replied instead, his voice cold and a little angry.

"When he left you in the back of my car. Amon said…" her fingers loosened on his sleeve. "Either sit down or go," her voice was weary. "This looks too suspicious."

Too suspicious? Nagira laughed in the back of his mind. No… you just look too needy. He took his seat again, flicking the ashes from his cigarette politely onto the empty plate in front of him. "So talk."

"Amon said he would never betray his comrades as I had… when he muscled me into working for him… with him. He wouldn't just leave me with someone who couldn't be trusted, not him."

Taking a long pull on his cigarette, Nagira chuckled under his breath. "That's a good theory, miss," he said, "but only if Amon considered you a comrade. You just said you were being muscled into working with him again." He ticked that off on his hands. "His words imply that you were betraying comrades." He held the two fingers up. "Two strikes. Who knows what the third one could be? Especially with someone like Amon."

Doujima's eyes widened as she looked at him, some inner revelation, he didn't doubt, something he wasn't privy to. She lifted her coffee cup to her lips slowly and took a long drink. "You can go now if you want."

* * *

Seated at a computer terminal in a library that felt very much like the city they were in, Robin typed hesitantly as she did a news search for strange occurrences in Tokyo. Thankfully, her search revealed nothing. Touko must be fine, she reasoned. Nagira… well, if Nagira weren't fine it could be anything. He might have gotten a tax audit about all his 'charitable donations', or into a fist fight with someone who refused to give him information.

Turning towards the phone booth near the doorway, she saw Amon leaning, like a big black blot in the fluorescent lighting. Yes, she reminded herself, he was always within eyesight of her, here. The real world to her was as much of a cage of his making as the island was her cage made for him. His gray eyes met hers and her heartbeat sped up.

He must know… about the island… she thought. About me looking.

But his gaze was no more accusatory than it normally was.

A screen popped up before her, and she looked at the computer monitor again, blinking. Before logging off, she emptied the recent items from the internet cache, and then followed the on-screen directions to log off the computer. Clicking the button, she logged off of the guest user account, knowing that it would erase the trash she took out of the internet cache the next time someone logged in. It would just take that person another moment or two to get logged in.

Silently, she thanked Michael for that bit of computer knowledge.

She stood, heading over to where Amon was talking quietly in the phone, and bumped into a younger looking man. For a moment, she thought it Sakaki, and she took a step back, not quite hearing what he was saying to her, though she could see the young man's lips moving.

He waved a hand in front of her face, and she saw, finally, that it wasn't Sakaki. "I said… what's your problem, lady?" the young man snapped angrily, "I apologized, I asked if you were ok… what's with the blank stare?"

"_Sumimasen_," Robin replied automatically in Japanese, falling back on her most recent language and customs, bowing at the waist as though Doujima's hand was firmly planted on her head. A wave of emotion seemed to pass over her as she did so, all of it emanating from the young man. Her eyes widened as she stared at her own booted feet.

This man… he was a Seed, Robin thought to herself.

"What the hell kind of language is that?" the guy growled.

Straightening up, Robin remembered that she wasn't in Japan anymore, reminding herself to speak the proper language for the proper country, and that most Seeds were unaware of what they were… or at least that this one could be. "Ah… it's Japanese," she said in a soft voice. "I said I'm sorry."

The guy's shoulders lifted in tension and he rolled his eyes. "Christ, why didn't you just say that in the first place? Are you ok?"

"I'm fine," Robin said, folding her hands over one another in front of her to hide the slight nervous shake to them. She'd lost sight of Amon over this tall American's shoulders.

"Yeah, well pay more attention next time," the guy replied, making a disgusted face and walking off.

In his place stood Amon, a much more reassuring silhouette in the face of a brief, gruff encounter, but not much better in the comfort department. "_What was that_?" he asked softly.

"_He bumped into me_," Robin said, shrugging slightly.

"_I meant the look on your face_," Amon replied, leading the way towards the front of the library to make their way out onto the crowded street. He held the door a second after passing through, and Robin hurried a step to make it out into the oppressive New York summer heat. "_When you straightened up, you had an expression_."

As though she did not normally, Robin thought to herself, feeling out of place dressed so warmly in such a hot city. If it weren't for all the other people dressed likewise in black, moving quickly and purposefully, chatting on cell phones and bobbing their heads to music, or speaking loudly with their companions, she might feel more like a sore thumb. "_He was a Seed_," Robin said softly.

"_Nani_?" Amon replied, quickly looking through the crowd for the young man.

"_He isn't awake_," Robin replied. "_There's nothing to worry about_."

Amon looked tense, and then, as though he simply made a decision not to be, his body relaxed. "_Let's go_."

"_Where?_" Robin asked, curious. Normally he would say something more along the lines of, 'let's go back to the hotel' or 'let's get moving'.

"_The park_."

* * *

"I'm just asking where it is that Doujima goes all the time," Sakaki said in an annoyed voice, typing at his terminal opposite Karasuma's. The leader of the STN-J was at home, probably asleep, leaving Michael and Sakaki alone in the office.

"Maybe you should ask Doujima," Michael said, rolling his eyes and typing quickly on his own terminal, his foot tapping to the beat of the music that played softly in his headphones. "I don't know, and I don't really care. Doujima is Doujima. Karasuma is Karasuma."

"You're not much help," Sakaki replied, leaning back over his chair to look at Michael's back. "Hey… are your shoulders a little more tense than usual?"

"Shouldn't you be at the shooting range, practicing?" Michael replied. Something he was monitoring, broadband, had turned up, but only a cursory response to his more in-depth query has come back.

"I get it," Sakaki replied, rolling off his chair and getting to his feet. "I know when I'm not wanted."

"It's not that you're not wanted, Sakaki," Michael said, without taking his eyes off the screen, "I'm just in the middle of something."

Sakaki made a noise of acceptance to that, but still shoved his hands into his pockets and headed out of the office for the elevator.

Finally alone, Michael took off his headphones and folded his arms on his chest. Something he'd always wondered about Solomon, even though he'd been working for the organization for years, was the class qualifications of the hunters. The listings were always clear. Even during Robin's Class qualifying test, which had been broadcast to the higher ups at the central Solomon HQ, all that had been transmitted to him back by way of information had been a brief statement.

_Robin Sena has achieved S-class status._

So this new information seemed most puzzling. The normal hunter classes were listed, D-class, B-class, A-class… the S-class listing was curiously absent from the list, and in it's place was C-class. Idly, Michael wondered what that meant to someone like Karasuma, but he brushed aside his personal feelings in favor of the curiosity at this new set of rankings.

His own name was notably absent from Solomon's records. According to the organization, he didn't exist anywhere. Of course, he thought morbidly, it was probably insurance in case they had to kill him off for finding out too much. The paperwork was probably less when a case like his ended cruelly.

Across the room there was a noise, a spark of electricity, perhaps, or maybe something outside. But nonetheless, Michael turned quickly. Then he laughed at himself. Solomon may have records on everyone, but he was not quite good enough to get into them. Or at least he'd let them think that. No sense in making a mistake twice. International hacking was something he steered clear of, now. And no one but the Hunters seemed to even know where the training facility was.

None of them ever seemed intent on discussing it with him, and Michael never considered that the sort of thing to ask a hunter about.

He laughed again, a more forced sound, and turned back to his terminal.

C-class hunters… What happened to S-classes?


	9. Numbers 1:6

Series: Abs Calamitas

Numbers: 1:6

Anime: Witch Hunter Robin / Abs Calamitas

A/N: Thanks to everyone for reading and reviewing! In the event of future chapters exceeding the ratingfor I've also started cross-posting this story on I'm user "Darkwood".

* * *

Amon shot up in the slender, sterile hotel bed. There were orange and white lights making patterns as cars passed on the street below. He rolled to his feet and crossed to the window as a blue and red flashing set of lights came silently closer, but all that it was appeared to be a routine drive by. The night desk manager walked out and waved before lighting a cigarette.

Over his shoulder, Amon knew that Robin was sleeping quietly in her own sterile cot of a bed. Like her room at Touko's apartment, like the couch at Raven's Flat… like the bed upstairs at Nagira Law Office. Quietly and soundly.

She hadn't had a nightmare in a while.

He'd been having them instead.

Always the same thing. An Orbo gun aimed at her head.

The sins of the past echoing on the present.

Memories he'd ignored for too long, perhaps. But it felt like there was something more to these dreams. Robin's face… the familiar face… it always looked a little too old. A little too angular, as though it has lost its youthful roundness.

And this time… she spoke.

'_If this is what it takes to heal your heart, Amon… then do it._'

A cold sweat on his skin.

That wasn't Robin's voice he heard, playing in his ears. He turned to look over at her, not just a reflection in the evening window, and stared at her for a moment. The Eve of Witches. The ultimate Witch. Named for the Witches' fallen King.

Robin.

The Devil's Child. An abomination. A creature that should never have been born.

Robin.

He put hands to his face, feeling the reassuring sensation of his own textured flesh against the smooth skin of his eyelids, and he inhaled a deep breath before pressing his stomach inwards to exhale, tightening the considerable muscles of his core. He was not his mother, he was not his father, he thought. She was not her mother, she was not her father, also had to be true. She was not the research that went into creating her.

Hope. Maria called her 'hope'.

It wasn't that thought that made him spare her life… that aimed the bullets so that she could dodge them. It was the faith of the frightened grandfather in the letter… it was the belief that people could become more than what their genes outlined for their lives.

He had to believe things like that. He didn't have Syounji-kun's luck with records. He was a Seed, and nothing that happened in his life would change that… except for becoming a Witch. Turning into a power-hungry…

NO!

If that was all that he could do, he would not have achieved S-class hunter status in the organization that hunted Witches. If that was all that he could do… he would have done it by now.

He padded, barefoot, across the small, clean room and into the bathroom. Without turning on the light, he splashed water on his face and looked up to meet his own eyes in the mirror.

* * *

"What are we here for again?" Jessica asked as she leaned over the desk in the briefing room.

"We got a hit on some strangely dressed people mingling with the public at a subway station," Shelly said. "The surveillance algorithm picked them out as they were making an exit."

The four hunters looked at the screen for a while. Jessica tipped her head to the side, curious. Mary exchanged a glance with Simon. They were the two senior hunters in the US-East office. Simon glanced back down at the monitor. Paul was leaning against the back of Shelly's chair, watching. He shook his head and stood up straight.

"No doubt about it," Paul said, arms folded on his chest in their briefing room. Jessica frowned at him. "Security camera footage from the subway station is pretty obvious. Even for New York, those two are dressed a bit strangely. Unless there's a convention in town that I missed."

"A hit on… what exactly?" Jessica asked.

"The profile looks for characteristics that stick out in crowds…" Shelly continued typing as she spoke, but trailed off as she cross-checked what parameters had alerted her terminal.

Mary glanced at Paul with an annoyed look on her face and then turned back to the screen. "She's just a girl."

"We've seen powerful Witches who were younger than that girl," Simon, the team leader, said. He sat in quiet contemplation of the two images on the screen. "What I don't like is the Seed that's with her," he said, lifting a finger and tapping the still frame of the security camera. "Enlarge this, would you Shelly?"

"Sure thing, Simon." The screens in the briefing room refreshed to a larger, clearer image of the security still-frame. The tall, dark haired man leading the young woman out of the crowd had his face turned over his shoulder to the camera.

Simon frowned as the picture became more enlarged.

"What's so scary about that?" Jessica asked. She leaned her head on one hand. "I think he's rather handsome. And I suppose if you look at it one way, it's rather romantic of him to be trying to protect her."

"She's a bit young for that to be romantic," Mary said with a disgusted look on her face.

"What's the problem here anyway? Two strange looking people in the New York subways? What's new about that?" Simon sighed, and Paul rolled his eyes. "Strange even for the _our_ subways," Jessica amended, kicking Paul's chair.

"Can you enlarge the picture anymore, Shelly?" Mary asked, staring at the screen.

"Something up?" Paul asked.

"That jacket looks awfully familiar," Mary replied.

"Let me try." Shelly worked for a moment and enlarged the image, but it came out fuzzy. "Let me see if I can enhance it… there."

Jessica arched both of her finely pruned eyebrows and elbowed Paul. "No way."

"S…T…N… J." Simon frowned. "J? J… help me out here… Jordan?" He looked at the picture and shook his head. "No way he's from Jordan, too pale. He'd stick out."

"Japan," Mary said. "That type, even with his height, he's got to be from Japan."

Simon pondered that for a moment. "Maybe there's something here we're not getting. Shelly, see what you can do about getting more information from the computer system about these two. Do a search and see what you can get on the STN-J."

* * *

The morning light was a welcome wake up call for Robin. She turned over, surprised to find an edge to her mind that she was normally free from. Drowsiness normally hung about her like curtains on a window, but this morning it was absent. She turned green eyes around the room, and found that Amon was not lying in the bed across from her. He was sitting at the small desk in the corner of the room, hands typing on the computer.

"That must be why," she said aloud.

Turning onto her side, she drew the sheets around her and sat up. There had been no shopping to buy clothes since they'd arrived. Amon had gotten money transferred into new accounts, but they were only accessible online at the present. There was no way to get a new card without a somewhere to mail it to, and that sort of thing was traceable.

That meant their clothes were starting to smell, some. It meant that showering was even more important… but somehow Robin couldn't bring herself to sleep nude with him in the room. It had been… months…

Sleeping had lost its torment in the form of nightmares about being murdered by the man across the room from her, but instead she felt confined being trapped in her clothes. It would not be appropriate, though, to take them off with him in the room, no matter what thoughts were running through her head about him.

She turned her eyes to look at Amon where he was seated, and that was when she noticed that the room was more humid than normal. Amon was… half-dressed. His hair was wet and he smelled strongly of the bathroom soap. Robin looked up at him, confused to find him so rushed and unkempt. It was unlike him.

Amon stood, and Robin turned her head to follow him as he moved across the room. "Get dressed. We have to go," Amon said, gathering what little was not on his person from the table between the two beds.

Robin stared at him for a long moment. "Amon, I don't underst-"

"We're being hunted."

The words were like the sound of a bell ringing through a cold foggy evening. Her confusion melted away and she sat up straight. She stared straight ahead, looking at the windows that were across from the beds. The blinds were closed and the light of day was held off by them.

Across the room, Amon moved with a beautiful economy as he straightened his clothes. Strong fingers did up the front of his clothes, and then slicked his hair back from his face. It was a momentary solution. Nothing could keep his thick black hair from framing or obscuring his face.

The first thought in her mind was for her necklace. She put a hand to her chest, and then turned to the night stand. It lay there, and she reached for it.

Within moments, the two of them were dressed.

* * *

It was early in the morning when Michael came across information he never expected to find. Reading through it quickly, he made sure to erase his footprints out of the system before he backed out of it. No good would come from being caught in a system he didn't belong in. That was a lesson well learned.

He glanced at the other terminals around him, feeling wary, suddenly, of his coworkers. C-class hunters.

Casualty class?

The other hunters all had a ranking according to power levels. C-classes weren't just intro hunters, they were of any level. There were even master hunters who were considered C-class. Sometimes they had an ailment, like the earth craft user sent after Robin. Sometimes they were loose cannons, and they didn't even know they were C-class themselves. It was like a junk tag added on at the end of an html document. If you didn't know what it meant, you overlooked it.

But now he knew what it meant.

Amon, still listed as an operative, had C-class on the tail of his report. It was also coded and filed under the 'rogue' section of the organizations database on hunters. There was no listing of Robin that he could find, at all.

Leaning back in his chair, Michael folded his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling. It took a long moment before his next thought came, and then he bent back over his computer terminal and his fingers flew across the keyboard.

There was nothing to be gained by sitting idle, and much information to be had from activity.


	10. Numbers 1:7

**Series: Abs Calamitas  
Numbers: 1:7  
Anime: Witch Hunter Robin**

A/N: Thanks to everyone for reading and reviewing! Back from internet death.

* * *

Karasuma pressed the button for the elevator. The doors opened and she stepped inside, reaching over to press the button for the fifth floor when Sakaki pushed his arm into the closing door. The doors stopped just shy of his arm, reopening, and he stepped inside. 

"Good morning, Miss Karasuma," Sakaki says as he tucks his helmet under one arm and leans against the back of the elevator.

"Good morning, Sakaki. You're in early, even for you," she replies with a smile, pressing the elevator button again.

"I was watching the news last night and I saw an unusual murder case. I thought it would be a good idea to come in early and check in on things."

Miho nodded. The two of them rode up to the fifth floor in relative silence, the noise of the electronics all that passed between them. In contrast to the lack of verbal traffic, Miho's thoughts moved much quicker.

It's like a role reversal, she thought. How many years ago was it that I was Haruto, and Amon was me? When did I start coming in early and leaving late? When did I start being team leader… if not in action, in my own mind?

On the top floor, Sakaki headed out of the elevator. When Karasuma lagged behind, he paused and turned to look at her. "Miss Karasuma?"

Karasuma looked up and smiled, following him out of the elevator and into the office. What the two of them found there surprised her.

Michael sat at his desk with his headphones off, eyes trained to the screen in front of him. His hands flew across the keyboard furiously typing, and occasionally moving over to the mouse. Sakaki paused as he headed in as well, stopping steps ahead of Miho, and looked at the hacker who had so recently stopped doing this sort of all-nighter work.

"Michael, what's up?" Sakaki asked, heading over to the other young man's desk.

"Someone's trying to hack into our records," Michael said absently, focused on the task at hand too strongly for detailed descriptions.

"Someone's trying to hack Solomon?" Miho asked, regaining her wits and heading across the room to Michael's computer terminal. The code flashing quickly by the screen did not make sense to her eyes, but she knew from the speed of it that the hacker must be fairly good, for Michael to be working so hard at keeping them out.

"Not Solomon. The STN-J mainframe here in the building," Michael replied.

"Can't you just take it offline for a little while?" Sakaki asked.

"What I can and can't do at the moment is limited by talking," Michael said in an annoyed voice. A part of him was annoyed at the interruption, another part was annoyed that he didn't think to do that when the hacking started. Moving a hand, he slid the mouse over and did as Sakaki suggested, continuing to type one-handedly.

* * *

"Damn!" Shelly cursed, grinning and leaning up to her keyboard. "Whoever's working the computers at the STN-J doesn't play games with intruders." 

"Would you be relieved if it was easy?" Paul asked, not looking up from his newspaper. He leaned in his chair with his feet up on his desk. "Besides, it's not like _you_ go easy on anyone. And that guy wouldn't know you were from another STN office, so there's no reason to go easy on you."

"That might be why he's playing so rough," Shelly countered.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I'm trying to sneak a peak at personnel files," Shelley explained, grunting. "If the guy really was a member of the STN-J, what's to say they haven't had problems with him before? Or with people trying to hack information out of them? It happens all the time to our system, I just don't feel the need to bring it up every time it happens."

"It might increase your job security," Paul replied, looking over the fold of the newspaper at her.

"I'm not worried about job security, P- SHIT!" Shelly flicked her hands off the keyboard and leaned back in her desk chair.

"What is it?" Paul lifted an eyebrow.

"He took the mainframe off-line. It's inaccessible… but he didn't do that at first… I wonder why not."

"Maybe he wanted to play," Paul offered.

"Yeah… sure… but if I can't get the information this way… it's going to be a shit ton harder to hack the system at Solomon HQ. Simon is _not_ going to be pleased."

From the doorway, the man himself spoke up. "No, no I'm not pleased. But it doesn't matter, we've gotten a hunt order."

* * *

Robin followed along, down the stairs behind Amon. He finished dressing himself on the way. She had managed to get into her shoes and get them zipped up the sides, but she found herself reaching for the gloves tucked deep inside her pockets as they made their way quickly out of the building. 

"I checked us out before I came back upstairs," Amon said, pushing their way out the side door of the stairwell and into the morning sunlight.

She didn't bother to reply, focusing instead on keeping up with his longer strides. At the STN-J, Amon had slowed just a little so they kept up with one another. He must be really worried, she thought.

Her eyes glazed over for a moment, and she felt a little…

He's never been hunted, she thought. Not like I have.

"Is it a hunter from HQ?" she asked, finally, reaching forward to take his wrist to keep from falling too far behind him as they moved down the alley behind the hotel and out onto the street on the far end.

It was an area of New York that seemed to never really get quiet. There were people out there. Amon hesitated at the end of the alley, and Robin caught up to him. He was taller, by a lot. His gray eyes scanned the crowd, and he took the hand of hers that was on his wrist and held it.

Robin was surprised at that, but remained silent.

Finally, as though Amon saw nothing, and was still unsure of the street, he asked her, "Can you feel them?"

"Feel… them?" she asked.

"The Craft users," Amon said. "There were two of them at the park. One used wind."

"I can't sense that sort of thing," Robin said, looking down the street.

"You can tell who is an unawakened Seed, but not a Craft using witch?"

"That was different," Robin said, feeling more than uncomfortable. Amon, telling her to _use_ her Craft? But no… he had done the same before, when they were working together… when they were escaping… "I don't know. He was right in front of me."

"Try," Amon said, ignoring her denial of her powers. "If you can't, then you can't. But try."

With a slight nod, Robin scaned the crowd, hoping… she tightened her gloved hand in Amon's, and scanned the walking people. There was nothing, at first… "Amon, I-" shed starts to say, again.

"_Try_, Robin," Amon said. For the briefest moment, Robin felt Amon's fingers tighten around hers. In reassurance… in support…

She closed her eyes for a moment, and then opened them again. Her vision blurred, and she saw the crowd, but the crowd looked different. The people were all slightly different colors. Most appeared to be red, glowing slightly, but with pulses and heartbeats and…

And some of them were blue, or green or…

None of them were looking back at her. She turned her eyes to Amon and saw that he, too, looked blue to her, but throughout the blue there were traces of yellow, a golden glint here or there. She looked down at her own gloved hand and found it was a bright gold.

Gold then, she thought, lifting her eyes to the crowd again. I look gold. Witches look gold. Hunters will look gold…

Robin shook her head slightly, "There aren't any here," she said, closing her eyes and willing her sight back to normal. She did not like to do that sort of thing, she found. She did not like to invade people's privacy.

Amon nodded, and stepped into the motion of the crowd, leading her through it.

* * *

"Is there any clue as to where the hack came from or what they were after, Michael?" Administrator Kosaka asked the young man, standing in the briefing room with the Hunters. 

"Something in the mainframe," Michael said, adjusting his glasses.

Patricia gave him a look. "Why would they go through the STN-J's computers to get to the Solomon mainframe? Isn't that an indirect route? A roundabout method?"

"You don't want to get caught hacking into the Solomon mainframe," Michael said soberly. "Using one of the satellite systems to hack in would be one way of covering your tracks but…"

"Then why didn't you think of it?" Doujima asked.

Michael ignored the question. Sakaki looked down at his cup of coffee and heaved a silent sigh. Karasuma gave Doujima a stern look.

"But if they just wanted to piggy-back onto our link with HQ, that wouldn't have required the in-depth hack that was attempted on the STN-J mainframe," Michael said. "There was something that they were looking for in our data files."

"Maybe it's another STN office looking for some recon," Sakaki suggested.

"That doesn't make sense either," Karasuma said, folding her arms on her chest and putting a hand up to trace her lower lip slowly. "None of our data files pertain to anything that another STN office would need."

Doujima looked up, and across the terminal screens she met Sakaki's eyes. Well, not much of anything… unless…

The Administrator cleared his throat. Hattori came to the door behind him.

"Whatever it may be," Kosaka said. "We have other things to worry about than one failed hack attempt on our system. Michael is more than up to the job of our computer security, and I see no reason to dwell on this problem any further. Please continue the investigations you are working on and leave this to him."

The Administrator turned and nearly bumped into Hattori, who happened to be carrying a tray with a cup of tea on it. The tea nearly spilled, but Patricia reached out from where she was leaning against the wall near the door and lifted the cup, setting it back down once the tray was stable again. She shook her head, stepping between the two men to exit the briefing room. "Honestly, you people and your tea," she said softly, as though to herself.

Hattori looked at the Administrator, and Kosaka shrugged at his assistant. "Carry on then," he said, heading out of the office.

It was after the three of them left the briefing room that Karasuma turned to Michael. "I want you to isolate all of the files pertaining to Amon and Robin in the mainframe and keep them off-line when you re-connect the system to the outside, Michael."

"_All_ the files pertaining to Amon?" Sakaki asked. "That's… a lot of files. He was here a long time."

"What if you just isolated the most recent ones… from the last year?" Doujima suggested. "Wipe out anything that has to do with Robin, so there's nothing for the other office to learn from us…?"

"Wouldn't that be telling them something too?" Michael asked, staring at his screen. His eyes were focused through it. He was tired, and this discussion about Amon and Robin wasn't helping.

"Telling them what?"

"If all our hunt files for the last six months of Amon's tenure with the STN-J are missing, that will let them know we're on to the intruder's search pattern."

"At least we know that Amon and Robin are alive somewhere," Sakaki said. "Not crushed by three hundred tons of rock."

"Contrary to our report," Karasuma said, looking over at Michael. She thinks about that for a moment, looking down at the floor.

"If HQ finds out we know anything about Amon and Robin's disappearance…" Michael started. "We may end up with worse than a substitute hunter to pick up the slack. That Italian priest that came to visit Robin, the night before we attacked the Factory… he seemed to be on her side. But we can't tell if he's highest up the pecking order. And if he's not, and someone else doesn't like Robin… we may all end up in very real danger if they find out about what we all know."

Doujima stood up. "And what _do_ we all know, Michael? They were here, they're gone."

Sakaki frowned. "Do you really believe that, Miss Doujima? Do you really think Amon and Robin could be…"

"Enough, everyone," Karasuma said, her voice heavy. She had been the last to see them… the last to… "Michael, what do you think would be best?"

The three other members of the STN-J blinked at that.

"I…" he smiled. "I think that as a precaution, when I'm not in the building, we should keep the mainframe off-line. If HQ questions that, we can at least sight the hacking incident as reason for the change in our protocol. Other than that, we shouldn't do anything. It would arouse suspicions."

Karasuma nodded. Michael had the most experience with what tipped the higher ups into a deeper investigation of a situation. She turned to Sakaki and Doujima. Sakaki and Doujima. Inwardly, she sighed. "And the two of you… if you have a problem with any of this, deal with it where listening ears can't hear you."

Turning for the doorway, Karasuma headed out of the briefing room and back over to her desk. Michael whistled quietly, and Sakaki looked down.

Doujima frowned for a long moment, and then collected herself, pasting a smile on her face. She headed out of the briefing room and gathered her coat.

* * *

"Is this it?" Mary asked, looking up at the small hotel. It was just nearing noon, and the Simon and Mary stood outside of a small building that Mary thought she never wanted to set foot in outside of work. It was quaint, but at the same time a bit shady. Not the normal type of shady. There were certainly shady hotels in the city. In the area, even. 

This one just felt… like…

The enemy, Mary reasoned at the end.

Her thoughts turned back to the pictures of the Witch they were hunting. The Witch in the robes of a nun, with her imposing guardian. There was something familiar about this Robin Sena… something that she couldn't quite place.

Simon, standing beside her, nodded. She threaded her arm through his, and the two of them headed into the lobby. "We're going to check out the front, Paul and Jessica should cover the exits."

"Roger," the double voices came over the headsets.

Where had she seen the girl's slender face before? Why was she familiar? Mary's lips twisted in a minute smile. Why did she want, so badly, to leave the girl alone? Was something about the work environment causing this, or was it something about the girl?

There was enough with the STN-A office she worked out of to make her uneasy. The fourth office in the broad country, they were understaffed. Only two voices… A standard STN hunting unit was five hunters, if not six, plus the tactical contact, making it a seven person unit per office, or eight. Not _five_. Simon shook his head and headed into the lobby with Mary beside him. The desk clerk smiled at the two of them brightly.

"Hello, my name is Margaret, and I'm the manager of the hotel. How can I help you two?" she asked.

"We're looking for my niece," Simon said. "She would have checked in a few days ago… the airline lost her luggage. She was coming over from Japan with her boyfriend… a tall fellow with black hair… he's fairly stubborn about things," Simon chuckled.

Add to that the coldness of the leader. Simon was barely convincing in his rouses at times. Like currently, his voice had very little to command belief in it. If Simon… or rather Shawn, as he went by on this sort of chatting excursion, if Shawn had any niece, he didn't care to find her. Or he wanted something bad from her. It was unacceptable to be so transparent on recon.

Margaret raised an eyebrow. "Mister Shouji didn't mention meeting the girl's family in town…"

Mary had been Simon's partner for years. They were in their thirties, or about to be, and had been hunting together in New York for almost ten years. But looking at him as he stood staring at the woman who was glancing at them quizzically made her feel more on the side of the young woman they were hunting. What was it about Robin that she remembered?

If she was a hunter… if she had been a hunter at one point, perhaps they had crossed paths. But where? In that habit it would be hard to forget seeing her.

"Mister Shouji doesn't like the American side of our family very much at all," Simon lied. "Something about being all-Japanese, I guess."

Margaret didn't look convinced. "You're supposedly related to that young lady?"

Unless it was among other nuns, Mary reasoned finally. And in an instant she knew where it was she had seen Robin. At Headquarters when she had her last training refresher. "Yes," Mary spoke up. "Little Robin. All he talks about, sometimes," she patted his arm tolerantly. "I told him to book with a better airline when her parents agreed to let her come over to visit, but he just wouldn't listen to reason, and now we can't quite find them."

"Well you still can't. Mr. Shouji and his… 'girlfriend' checked out early this morning." She turned the book around. "With the night clerk,_my_ nephew."

* * *

It was still well before noon by the time the two of them boarded the bus, and Robin wondered if the entire country was hot and humid at that point. No luggage must look suspicious to someone somewhere. 

Amon led the way back to their seats on the bus, and let Robin sit next to the window, taking the aisle seat with a frown on his lips for any casual onlookers. From New York to Chicago… another big city, another humid summer landscape.

More unfamiliar faces.

But at least he knew there would be a break for them there. A bank card, new clothes… hopefully a respite from hunting. America had seven STN offices, but the likelihood of them coming up on the radar for two was low, unless Solomon was actively hunting them.

And why would Solomon do something like that?


	11. Numbers 1:8

**Series: Abs Calamitas  
Numbers: 1:8  
Anime: Witch Hunter Robin **

A/N: Thanks to everyone for reading and reviewing!

* * *

Coming back from a short lunch, Nagira entered the office to find Hanamura glaring at him from over her computer screen. Hattori wouldn't look up from his calculations. With a sigh, Nagira hung up his coat and held up both hands. 

"Fire away, Hana-chan."

"What makes you think I have _any_thing to say to a louse like you?" she asked, typing furiously. "You've got an appointment in an hour, and you've got a hysterical girl up in the apartment. Take your pick."

"Hysterical?" Nagira asked with an arched eyebrow at his secretary.

"Ohh, don't be so dense!" Hanamura folded her arms on her chest, disregarding her typing work, and pushed her chair back, standing. "You can't just switch lovers at the drop of the hat. You've been chasing skirts again, no doubt, and the new girl found out about it, I bet."

"Even if I have been, which I haven't… what would she know about it?"

"Even working girls have eyes!" Hanamura said, pointing at the door. "Now you march right up there and apologize for being such a louse."

"I haven't the foggiest clue what you want me to do that for, Hana-chan," he said with a smile. "But I will take your advice on going to talk to my friend."

Inwardly, he sighed. As if he had time to chase skirts? Doujima and the rest of her STN-J team were good at hunting dangerous witches, and he could live with that the way that he lived with the fact that murderers were put to death, but there were other branches of the STN-J that didn't involve hunters. The part of that black organization that watched people because they were related to witches… Seeds…

He headed out of the office and up to the apartment and found the door was partly open. He pushed it open and looked around. For a minute, he didn't see anyone. "Yurika?"

Movement in the bathtub. She wouldn't really…

The air was cool and without humidity, and Doujima did not strike him as the type to take a cold bath, if she could help it. No, she couldn't be bathing. He pulled back the plastic curtain and found her sitting in the bathtub with her knees drawn up to point at the ceiling, like her chin. On second thought… Nagira crossed over and closed the door.

"What's wrong, Yurika?" he asked, returning to the tub side.

Doujima lowered her face, turning to look at Nagira, and blinked for a moment, as though she hadn't really expected him to be there, or to come up and check on her. As though she didn't really belong here.

This, like so much, was Robin's.

This place… this man?

And now, he was leaning against the tub with one arm resting on it, the other leaned up to cushion the side of his face and those horrible lamb chops… paying attention just to her. Listening. Waiting.

"Yuri-" Nagira started to talk again, but got cut off.

Doujima leaned over and pressed her lips to his.

* * *

The problem with buses was that they stopped. And stopped. And stopped. 

Amon was getting agitated by all the stopping. His normally arctic cool was thawed and he felt turbulent like a stormy ocean. Robin was asleep again, leaning against the window of the bus… or so quiet and still that she looked to be sleeping. That could be nice. Sleeping wherever… whenever it was convenient.

Trusting…

Trusting him to maintain cool and calm and to look out for her.

He adjusted his hands on the armwrests as the bus _finally_ pulled into the Chicago station. He reached over and roused Robin again, expecting her to tense, to freeze, to be scared, as she had on the island when he woke her…

But she turned her head towards him and opened her eyes slowly.

"We're here," he said.

Robin nodded. The bus stopped and Amon stood, offering her a hand. She took it, gratefully, and kept it as they filed off the bus with the others. Instead of heading into the terminal, because they had no luggage, Amon lead Robin out onto the street.

It was amazing what you could do on the internet these days. He'd rented an apartment, and gotten a card to access his bank accounts… even was having the passports wired to the address.

It would take a few days, but then that was why he had rented two different apartments. The first would last for a week, perhaps. The hotel had lasted nearly that long before he got the itch to desert it. The itch and the tip. With luck the two apartments could be enough until they could get out of the country.

The only problem would be cameras…

That had to be what had tipped the North Eastern branch of the STN-A.

That and his jacket.

It was really too warm for it… but without it, his clothing would definitely stick out. Stick out more than Robin's. And her hair…

"When we get to where we are going, you need to change your hair," Amon said softly as they headed to a cross walk. He had the directions memorized to the first apartment.

"My hair?" she asked softly, looking up at him.

"It stands out."

Robin thought about that for a moment. She lifted a hand to touch her bangs where they fell down in her face, and then looked around as they headed down the street. In Japan, while not normal, it was accepted. She could still blend in because there everyone was trying to look interesting at her age. Here… in America, in Chicago… the style of her hair was not normal.

* * *

This sort of thing didn't happen. It just didn't. More and more hunters were becoming useless to the cause. More and more of the soldiers of the organization were losing nerve and falling from the path of the righteous. It had started in Japan, though the STN-J had lost none of their craft users. In fact, signs were pointing to one of the Seeds developing a Craft rather than losing the power of it. But from Japan, the power fluctuations and doubts had spread outwards like a radiating circle. China, Indonesia, Russia… it was even beginning to show signs of crossing the Pacific Ocean… the hunters in the STN-A4 and A3 were beginning to question… 

The dark hall of the cathedral echoed with Maestro Abele's pacing footsteps. A candle lit in the darkness, and then another. The _Maestro_ turned to see who it was and saw _il Padre_ standing with his hands folded in prayer over the hilt of a sword.

"She is a dangerous Witch who must be hunted!" The maestro said in an urgent whisper. Within Solomon, between those who found the faith a full part of dealing with the entities known as Witches, there were the hypocritical, and there were the devout. The Maestro Abele was one of the devout.

"Without faith in the hunters who do battle with the darkness, there is nothing for those of our rank to do but fall," Padre Juliano said, eyes remaining closed, hands still holding the curved blade above the rows of unlit candles. The light of the two flames that were burning caught the well-honed blade and reflected across the chancel and splintered off to cast yellow into the transepts of the cathedral.

"The power she represents, returning to the hands of those heretics, is unacceptable!" Abele drew a short blade of his own that shone in the candle light that spilled from the transepts into the chancel. "Your pathetic sentimentality for that heretic is deplorable!"

"As is your short-sightedness," Juliano replied. "The Hunter is the body of the organization, the guard against those who would hurt mankind."

"It seems," Abele said, lifting his blade at Juliano, "that I have not taught you all you need to know yet, my son."

The shining, silver blade made quick work of the old man on the wrong end of it. The victor of the battle disposed of the body and retreated from the cathedral, pausing to kneel and make the sign of the cross on his body.

* * *

Alone in his apartment, Sakaki stared at the ceiling. 

He wasn't at the shooting range. He wasn't running laps at the park. He wasn't joyriding on his motorcycle.

He was thinking about work.

He was thinking about his co-workers. About how frustrated he was with Mrs. Nye, and Doujima-shi, and Karasuma-san. Doujima-shi… who was always disappearing somewhere. Doujima-shi who came back to the office with a bright blush on her face and her hair slightly messed up. Karasuma-san, who had made a long-suffering roll of her eyes and put a hand to her head. Karasuma-san, who was impossible to understand.

Mrs. Nye acted like he was a baby. Doujima-shi ignored him and was seeing someone else. Karasuma-san treated him like a little brother.

Thumping his head on the floor where he was stretched out, Sakaki sighed. None of this was what he wanted. None of it at all.

Was this the height of all he could expect from himself at the STN? A mediocre B-class hunt rating? Excellent marksmanship with nothing more to show for it than a clean record and a bunch of screw ups?

He pressed his eyelids tighter together.

Was this all of his life? Squabbling and flirting hopelessly with women out of his league? His temples pulsed, he was giving himself a headache.

He was angry with himself, angry with his Craft, angry with Solomon-

He opened his eyes with a sigh, and was surprised to find the ceiling much closer than he had expected it would be. The pain in his temples went from a pulsing to a burning. He turned his head and saw that his floor was beneath him. He was off it by four feet. The burning intensified to an inferno, and then there was the harsh rush of air.

Sakaki never felt his body impact with the floor. His mind was swallowed by a cool, blissful blackness.

* * *

Angrily, Paul kicked the car that they had driven over to the hotel in. Simon's car. He ground his teeth. "If you tear your hair I think you could aspire to be a classical fiction character," Jessica said. 

"Witches have vanished before, especially right before a hunt," Mary said. "It's nothing to get so upset about."

Simon regarded the two women with an even glance and headed over to his car without a word. Paul kicked the tire again. "Witches have," Simon said as he put a hand on the other man's shoulder before unlocking the doors. "But those two are worse than Witches."

Paul blinked and turned to look at Simon as he climbed into his car. Mary frowned. Jessica looked dubious before she asked, "What's worse than Witches?"

No response came from Simon. He closed his car door, taking out his mobile unit, and pressed the button on his headset.

"Shelly."

"Yeah boss?" the woman's voice responded to him almost immediately. If he listened carefully, Simon could hear her fingers working on a keyboard. "What's up?"

"Do you have anything on the Witches?"

"Other than that they're hunters?" Shelly replied.

"Hunters… plural?" he asked.

"Looked over the hunt orders we got from the top, and they are for both of them. Nagira Amon and Robin Sena. The details were sketchy beyond that. Seed and a Craft User… Nagira.. or I should probably say 'Amon', as that's what he's listed as throughout the rest of the briefing, is a Seed… he joined Solomon at a young age, and advanced quickly up the ranks of the hunters."

"That doesn't tell me a thing about the Sena girl," Simon said with a slight frown. He reached into his pocket and took out his cigarettes. Cloves. It was more of an oral fixation than a nicotine habit, or at least that was what he told himself.

The ignition key turned over, but he didn't start the engine. A finger pressed the window button on his door handle, and the window cracked slightly. The gray trail of smoke from his cigarette took the cue and left the cabin of the car into the atmosphere outside.

"The likelihood of a hunter like Amon turning on the organization for a girl is slim to nil. I know the type." Shelly's voice was somewhat cold, and definitely scornful. "Indoctrinated at a young age… the organization is this man's family. His whole life. It would take more than a pretty face to steer him from the straight and arrow."

"You know the type, huh?"

"I could wait for you until the ice caps melt and it'd be the same story," Shelly said in an empty tone. "Something drastic must have happened."

"The hardest hearts are the most susceptible to love," Simon replied to her.

"You let me know when your catchy generalizations apply to you, ok boss?" she quipped back. "Anything else?"

"About the Sena girl?" Simon asked.

"Very little. Craft user… fire… sixteen. Bare bones on that one. She's not a Japanese native."

"Careful Shelly… you sound jealous."

The line went dead.

Simon lifted the cigarette to the window and flicked the ashes out the glass. He took another drag from it and tipped his head back onto the seat pad.

* * *

Amon sat at the small table where he had the new laptop set up. His fingers moved quickly on the keyboard, and he scanned the screen. On the bed across from the desk shopping bags were strewn about. Only one of them was disturbed. The drug store bag had contained scissors for trimming hair and a color tint for Robin. She had taken it down once they got to the apartment for the first time, and when she woke from resting… yet _again_ she had been resting… she simply left it down. 

There was nothing to be done about Amon's hair. When they were in the store, Robin had held up a box with red in it next to Amon's face, as though she were contemplating the change of color on him. He glanced at her sidelong and she had put the box carefully back on the shelf with a shrug.

But as they headed to the checkout, she seemed more lighthearted than she had in New York.

There was a mirror over the small desk where Amon was typing on his computer, and as he waited for the codes to ping off the server, his eyes wandered up to it. The view was mostly dark, in the late evening, the bedroom in the apartment did not get much light. There was a view of the bathroom.

A square of light in a dark room.

His eyes went almost instantly to the doorway. It was open halfway, and through it, he could see Robin standing at the sink.

Standing in a towel.

Her back was curved, her head bent down over the sink.

She couldn't see that he was looking at her. He didn't realize he was looking at her for a moment. It was just the square of light that he was seeing. And then it wasn't just the square of light, it was the person that was inhabiting it.

Robin was slender, she had always been slender. The towel she had on still had the cardstock tag from the small department store they'd gone to. Her skin was pale from her ankles on upwards. The water in the sink was running, and one of her feet was tapping slightly on the tile floor.

How long he'd been watching her, Amon couldn't tell. The computer before him was neglected and forgotten, despite the fact that it had yielded to his desire and completed pinging the server for the applications he was so interested in. The immediacy of the situation didn't seem to reach him. They had been hunted and survived.

A low voice in his mind chuckled at him. 'Hunted? You were aware of a search being conducted in the STN-J mainframe. You moved location. You haven't been hunted.'

He frowned, thinking that perhaps the voice in his mind was right. Was this his reasonable side? Why was it speaking to him now? He was rational. He was reasonable. She was practically a nun… or practically a child. There was no reason for him to be anything other than passive to her appearance. Towel-clad or fully clothed.

Robin shifted, and the line of the towel changed its fall against the back of her legs. Amon's eyes followed it.

Impossible.

* * *

Walking into the lobby, Michael waved to the security guard. He waved in response. "Hello, Mr. Michael," the guard said to him. "Better hurry on upstairs. Mr. Sakaki won't be making it in today." 

"He won't?" Michael asked, stopping in his tracks.

"The hospital called to say that he was under observation for possible head trauma," the guard replied. "He's out for the day, unless there's an emergency."

"Thank you," Michael said, dipping his head politely. He pulled out his mobile unit and turned to head back out of the lobby.

What would give Sakaki head trauma? Michael frowned. The taxi he'd taken in hadn't pulled away yet. He opened the back door and climbed into it again. The hospital that Sakaki had been taken to was listed in the daily report. He gave the address to the driver and the taxi pulled away from the curb again.

As they reached the hospital, his phone rang. It was Administrator Kosaka. Michael pressed the talk button on his headset and slipped it on.

"Yeah boss?"

"You're late," Kosaka said to him.

Michael paid the cab fare and climbed out, heading up to the front of the hospital. "I'm going to check on Sakaki," he replied. "Is there an emergency?"

"Well, no, but…"

"Then I'll be in this afternoon," Michael said, pressing the end button on his headset.

Inside, he checked in at the desk and headed over to the elevator. It was a short, boring trip up before he made it to the floor, and found the room. Unsurprisingly, Sakaki was sitting on the bed, upright, and staring out the window. His legs were crossed, and there was an ace bandage wrapped around his right arm.

"Got your shooting arm, huh?" Michael asked.

Sakaki turned his head quickly and started, reaching for the small, hospital standard dresser. He relaxed when he saw that it was Michael, and offered a slight smile. "Yeah."

Haruto turned back to the window, watching the birds in the tree outside. Micheal stood and watched them too, for a moment. He sobered when a nurse's cart rolled by outside the doorway and he glanced at the wall, noticing the clock. He had to go in that afternoon…

"So… what happened?"

Sakaki didn't reply for a long moment, and when he did, it was quietly. "I fell."

"You fall all the time, you don't get concussions from it," Michael said. "The report said that your landlord found you passed out in your kitchen. Is it anemia? Did someone break in?"

"I fell," Sakaki said again.

"You keep saying that, but I don't see how someone who has your training and experience could fall and get a concussion in your apartment. If you were attacked, Sakaki, there's no shame in admitting it. People have break-ins all the time…"

"I fell from my ceiling."

"What?"

Sakaki didn't bother turning around, he continued staring out the window. He wasn't sure this was what he really wanted. To be a Craft user? The training he'd have to undergo… the years spent at headquarters… Amon never mentioned the amount of training he'd undergone to become a senior hunter, but Sakaki could tell it was rigorous. He looked up to Amon, honestly. The man was something like a hero to him. He was cool, he was tall and attractive to women. But…

"What do you mean you fell from your ceiling?" Michael asked again, stepping closer to the end of the bed to peer around at Sakaki's face. He didn't understand for a long while, and then it hit him. Everyone involved in Solomon was either a Craft-user, a Seed, or someone with enough money to ensure that they knew enough secrets to keep them safe. Sakaki wasn't rich, and he wasn't a Craft-user.

"You…"

"Don't make a big deal of it," Sakaki said.

Michael stared at Sakaki's face in confusion for a long moment. He'd awakened. Just like that…? Something had to trigger that sort of thing, didn't it? There was some reason for things like that to happen. They didn't just happen. And… if they _did_ just happen, Michael didn't know what happened to the people who woke up like that.

"Please," Sakaki said, meeting Michael's eyes.

"…whatever you say," Michael said. He took a step back from the bed. There was nothing threatening about Sakaki's gaze. Rather, there was something worried. Not desperate or cornered, just worried.

* * *

"Nagira-san, you've got a phone call from a woman." 

Hanamura leaned back from her desk and glared at Nagira as she said it. He wasn't paying the strictest attention to the office environment. It wasn't new. He had been distracted the past few afternoons. Yurika kissed him… and he'd kissed back. What the hell was going on here? A woman he didn't trust, one who he was pretty sure was only using him regardless…

It could be nice to be wanted, even if it was only enough to be used.

"_Nagira!_" Hanamura snapped.

His eyes turned to regard his secretary.

"The phone."

"Hai, Hana-chan," he replied finally, reaching a hand forward to pick up the phone. "Moshi moshi."

Hanamura watched her boss, but the man's face was almost impossible to read. With one hand he took out a notepad and pen and wrote something on it, and then he set the receiver back in the cradle. He stood, grabbing his coat and putting the entire notepad into his pocket, and headed for the door.

"Nagira-san…" Hanamura began again.

"I'll make the appointment this afternoon as well," he replied, stepping out of the door.

Wide eyes watched Nagira as he headed out of his office. They stayed at the door after it had closed behind him. Harutto even looked confused as he watched his boss run out of the office.

"If it's that blond again…" Hanamura said with venom in her tone.

"The new one or the one from before?" Harutto asked.

Hanamura glared at him. It was a thing, with Nagira Syunji, she found. He liked women, but he specifically liked his women a certain way. Hanamura had thought, for a while, that she was one of Nagira-san's "women", but it became quickly clear as she worked for him that she was much more valuable at her desk than on it. She liked it that way.

It was better.

It also made her feel motherly about Nagira-san, or perhaps big sisterly about him. She worried when he didn't keep up with his responsibilities, when he missed appointments, and when he was out chasing skirts. She was ruthless with hounding him to be the sort of Nagira that he could be, rather than the sort of Nagira that he felt like being most of the time. The reason she kept it up was that he seemed to agree with her. Syunji was a good man, she knew it. The way that he treated people, the way he went out of his way for his clients…

And then there was this Doujima woman.

Hanamura shook her head and turned back to her desk. "It's no business of mine what blond skirt he's chasing today," she said stiffly.


	12. Numbers 1:9

**Abs Calamitas**  
Numbers: 1:9  
Anime: Witch Hunter Robin

A/N: Thanks to everyone for reading and reviewing! I'm glad everyone is enjoying the story so much, I'm glad to be writing it. MegaCon was a blast this year (my first convention ever) and I'm looking forward to some more this season. I'll be sure to let everyone know where I'll be.

* * *

The scissors were sharp enough, she knew, having tested them by trimming the ends of her own hair. The cuts were straight, there was no fraying of the ends that came from a dull blade. She stared at Amon for a moment. 

Would he let her get close enough to use them?

It had been months… a year? Perhaps a year since he had pulled his gun on her. Since he had attempted to shoot her.

He had not shot her.

It was a very strange sensation of betrayal that she felt when she thought about the incident. About the whole of what had transpired at the STN-J between the two of them. There was something very comforting about how he had been with her, by her side, but there was something ruthless in how he had lied to her, tricked her into going into the warehouse. No one else had been briefed on the mission.

She should have known there was something more to the situation. But at the time she had blindly trusted Amon. Since then…

Since then things had changed. In Touko's apartment, she knew what had stopped Amon from killing her. But that was after the incident in the warehouse. Why hadn't he shot then?

* * *

Nagira rushed out of the office, pulling his coat on as he took the stairs out of the building two at a time. Touko had sounded… 

He was unsure what the proper adjective to describe Touko's tone was. Despite a broad range of experience, he was not adept at discerning the moods of a woman he had spent no time with. A smile tugged the corner of his lips. Touko was another one of Amon's girls.

It amusing to think of Amon as that type. The stern, dark watchdog revealed as a ruthless hunter of the opposite sex.

Nagira chuckled.

The only thing Amon hunted was Witches.

Nagira wondered if his brother was still doing that. But he put the question out of his mind as he entered the subway tube. He'd lied to Hanamura-san. That was wrong, he knew. But it didn't have to get out of hand.

He swiped his metro pass and headed down the stairs to the trains. It would take two hours to get to his destination, and he could not be certain how long he would be once he got there. Waiting for the proper train in the press of the other people in the station, he took out his cell phone.

Hana-chan couldn't get too upset if he informed the client that he would be late. She knew what he was like, there was nothing to suggest anything other than his usual behavior. And if she did, perhaps it was time to get a new secretary. Hanamura Mika had lasted the longest to date, for various reasons.

One secretary had been shot on the way to her car. She'd not only quit, but sued Nagira for endangerment of his workers. He'd settled out of court once he got the formal letter she'd written him. It wasn't the sort of thing he wanted to advertise. The papers wrote up the incident as a mugging, and his secretary had agreed to let that stand.

Another secretary had gone to the market for dinner, and simply never returned. After that, he decided against employing Solomon labeled Seeds in his office staff. It was alright to have close ties with them, as he wasn't on Solomon's watch grid, but keeping them in arms' distance of him was a bit dicey. And if one of them were to awaken to violent powers in the office…

Well, it could get violent. It had.

Amon had relayed the information to his brother that time. His words were cold, his gaze was livid. After the hunt, the dark haired younger brother left the returning Factory retrieval van and got into his car. A quick drive downtown was all it took to pay his older brother a visit.

Nagira's jaw still clicked sometimes, when it was cold.

There had been one or two that were very dedicated to him. Too dedicated… It was eerie, what some women would settle for, given the right timing.

A good secretary, a stable one that had no designs on a wedding band, was hard to find, apparently. Maybe it was the part of Japan he was in. Maybe it was a general aversion to the clerical occupation. Whatever, he was glad to have Hanamura as his secretary.

The phone conversation ended, and his commute to the meeting began. Thankfully, while he couldn't smoke on the trains, he could chew nicotine gum. It was nowhere near as satisfying. Nicotine gum had a very low death toll to its name, publicly anyway. There was little threatening about chewing a piece of gum. It didn't engage those around him, it didn't actively change the quality of the breathing he was doing. But it was good enough to subdue his oral fixation.

It took half a pack of the stuff to get him all the way to his destination, and by then his clicking jaw was reminding him how much of a jerk his brother could be. He got off the train and headed out of the station, then took a cab to the tea house that Masaki-san had indicated she would be waiting at.

The minute he opened the doors to enter, he knew what sort of place it was that he was entering. No one turned to look at him, but the head waiter bowed his head to the customer at the counter and turned to greet him politely with a deeper bow. Nagira returned it, but couldn't shake the feeling that even though no one was aimed at him, they were all watching.

Masaki Touko was seated at the small counter, and when he stepped over to her, she got off her bar stool and headed to the back of the shop.

As he ducked past the cloth curtain covering the tea house's rear seating from the front, he knew why she had chosen this place. Here, in the back, it was silent and somewhat dim. There were no interruptions.

Touko folded herself onto a seating cushion, and poured him a cup of tea. "It's the sort of place where no one listens when they're told not to," she said.

"If you're someone they listen to, or if you pay enough," Nagira replied, taking the seat across from her. It wasn't as easy as it could or perhaps should have been to fold himself down onto the cushion and sit at the table, but he did it. He picked up the cup. "Arigatou," he said before taking a sip.

* * *

The answer was fairly simple, really. Amon didn't shoot Robin because he was unsure that she deserved to be shot. He did not believe her to be a Witch the way that Zaizen claimed. She felt too wholesome… and he wanted to believe that. It was one of the rare instances in his life in which he did exactly as he wished instead of moving as he was directed and as was logical. A doubt had been enough for him before, to terminate Kate. It was simple. Kate was falling, and so he had done what had to be done to stop her fall. 

He had been too dogmatic to see that he had only pushed Kate's fall harder.

And if a doubt was enough to end a life, the same had to be true about saving one.

Robin was not a Witch like those they hunted for the STN-J, for Solomon. Robin was Robin. She was a feeling, sensible person who could smile, and even laugh when the occasion warranted it. There was no reason to shoot Robin.

Besides, that logical part of his mind reminded him, she was very good at getting out of the way of bullets. Or stopping them.

But was there doubt in Robin's mind?

Amon put the thought away and chose not to think on it further. She had a sharp pair of scissors, and he was seated calmly at her mercy.

He was sitting in a chair in the bathroom. His hair wouldn't be dyed, as hers was, but it was easily trimmed. Robin stood behind him with a pair of scissors that were marked on the product packaging as being 'for use on hair'. She stared at the back of his head, wondering if changing the way he looked would change the attraction she felt for him.

'If that's it,' she thought as she lifted a comb to his thick black hair, 'then it is a silly crush.'

Robin stepped to the side and leaned Amon's head back slightly over the sink. She cupped water in one hand and began to dampen his hair. Amon stared at the ceiling for most of it. She let a small smile broaden the curve of her lips, and gently ran her fingers through his hair.

It felt nice.

He made himself content with acknowledging that her fingers in his hair felt nice. He didn't let people this close. Touko was not this close to him… Kate had never done something like this.

His mother had, long ago, he was certain.

He had never stared at his mother in a towel. It wasn't the sort of thing one did to a mother. He felt his eyes turn and look up at Robin. She was diligent at the task of dampening his hair, and her eyes were focused on it. He could easily see the small smile on her lips. It relaxed him. He liked it.

His own lips relaxed in response to her mood.

How long had he been tense? Was it natural to be this eased by someone else's mood changing? For many years, Amon had avoided the sort of contact he was having with Robin. There was a reason for it. Trusting people… more than just to be competent… acknowledging their opinions and being together with someone… it was dangerous.

He was unaware that he was staring so intently at Robin's face until he found the green eyes meeting his own. Between their gaze, in his peripheral vision, he could see that she was breathing more heavily than normal. He ignored it. Just a haircut, he told himself.

Robin's slender fingers cupped the back of his head and she lifted it slowly, making sure that the dampness remained on the towel draped around his shoulders as he sat up. Her fingertips lingered for a long moment. She knew it, she knew he could feel them… but she did not care at that moment. He was letting her touch him, letting her be close.

Physically close in a way that he still had yet to open up to her intellectually. In space, and in sharing, they were as intimate as the colors of light and dark that made up the yin yang symbol. But there was very little about them that touched. Very little was beyond functional partnering. Trust and protection.

This was beyond it, if only for her.

"How short, do you think?" She asked as she lifted the comb and straightened his wet locks. They fell longer wet than they did when they were dry. His bangs came down to his chin, and the rest was past his shoulders.

"Several inches, at least."

Gently, Robin marked a length with her finger against the side of his face.

Amon noted the slight tremble, but ignored it for the moment in favor of the luxuriousness of contact with someone. It was nothing he had been missing, before, but something that for a moment was all he cared about.

"Good enough," he said.

And then the scissors and comb were working.

He closed his eyes, preferring to feel, for the moment, the closeness of her presence in the bathroom, the warmth of her and the way she moved as she cut. Careful. She was being very careful, not that she was ever flamboyant or flashy with moving. She was controlled.

Which was why she was safe.

This Robin could not be the one that was a Witch. If there was a Witch Robin that existed. This Robin was safe. This Robin was his.

Amon's eyes opened.

His?

"Amon?" Robin asked softly.

He closed his eyes again, trying to relax in the chair as he had been before. But she knew, he could feel it in the hesitation of the scissors cutting through his hair. The haircut finished, and Robin set the scissors down. She turned to the sink, still standing beside the chair, and washed her hands.

Amon turned his head to the side slightly, glancing at her again. She was still barefoot, wearing a pair of jeans and a tank top. Her back was curved, her eyes focusing on the sink. She was always so focused.

Her hip was less three inches from his shoulder.

He had to wonder, if she was so focused, was that what put her that close, or kept her that far?

* * *

The two of them sipped their tea quietly… politely, for almost fifteen minutes. Nagira made a low comment about the flavor being good, and Touko just smiled. They were silent for twenty more, until finally Touko set her tea cup down on the table. 

At last, Nagira thought, someone's going to say something.

"Amon," Touko said, turning her head slightly to regard one of the wall scrolls hanging in the small, somewhat dim tea room.

Nagira kept silent, wondering what about Amon had urged Touko to call him all the way out here. What about… the situation she didn't understand.

"Is he dead?"

A confused little noise came out of Nagira's throat as he looked at Touko. What was it, a year ago now when Amon broke it off with this woman? And what was it that Amon had said when asked about it…

Nagira had been curious about his brother's relationship with the well-connected daughter of the head honcho at STN-J, but Amon seemed… apathetic, disconnected in regards to it. There was nothing in his tone when he said that it was casual to hint at any sort of feeling about it.

It made Nagira wonder whose idea it had been to start.

After Amon had gone from the house they both grew up in, after he'd come back to Japan from wherever he'd gone, he was still a teenager. He was still a teenager, and he was suddenly someone else's problem. Zaizen had arranged for everything regarding Amon's living situation… Had Zaizen arranged for Touko as well? Had his brother been sneaky about it? Was there some deeply buried affection that Amon simply didn't show? Or had it been by Touko's design that the two of them happened… even casually?

Amon, you bastard, was all that Nagira could think at that moment. One more problem you dumped in my lap. One more of your women.

"Let me ask you this," Nagira replied. "You think a couple tons of concrete could kill Amon?"

Touko reached for her tea cup again. "He's only human," she said, looking up to meet Nagira's eyes as she did.

A chill jolted the nerves in Nagira's spine. He looked back at Touko with a blank expression for a moment as the words she spoke sank in. It was true… Seed or not, Amon was just a human being. Robin was just a human being, Witch or not. The collapse of the Factory was _more_ than enough to kill a human being.

Touko's eyes continued to hold Nagira's, until he laughed.

"Sure," Nagira said once he recovered himself enough to paste a smile on his face. "Sure, Amon's human, you and I are the Witches."

A jolt made Touko sit up straight, and her lips pressed together in an angry line. "He's human," she said firmly. "Amon's just like you and me."

Bored at repeating the same conversation with the potentially delusional woman again and again, Nagira tipped back the last of his tea and rose. He bowed to her and headed through the partition again. This was what he'd wasted the afternoon on? What was so special about Touko that he had come all the way out here to talk with her?

Nagira headed back to the train station, and stood waiting. He checked the schedule, and then his watch. There was time before his train would arrive… a lot of it. He kicked a piece of trash and headed over to a vending machine to get a cup of coffee.

That tea tasted rancid where it lingered on his tongue.

Something about that whole conversation was stagnant and wrong. He hated tasting air like that, let alone tea. Carrying the warm can of coffee, he headed back over to one of the benches in the small station and took a seat before popping the top open.

"Is this sort of thing really healthy?" a soft female voice asked.

Not seeing the speaker, he could almost imagine it was Robin asking him that question. Innocently peering into the grocery store packaging over his shoulder or holding a pair of chopsticks awkwardly poised over the food in front of her.

He didn't bother to turn.

He'd left the tea house, he hadn't run from it. It wouldn't have been hard for Touko to follow him down to the terminal.

"You've had it before too, I'm sure," he said, taking a sip.

Touko sat on the bench beside him. She was wearing a coat that was buttoned up, he could see out of the corner of his eye. She looked warm in it. He shifted his suit jacket on his shoulders, wishing he'd worn his too.

A train pulled into the station. The noise of the brakes was loud, it needed to be serviced. It was a grating noise, loud and drowning. Touko said something, but all he could hear was the grinding of the brakes on the train as it slowed to a stop.

It sounded almost like the Factory's stones.

As the sound faded away, Nagira could hear Touko's words. "You think this visit was a waste of your time," she said. She was reaching into her jacket. She took out an envelope and set it beside her on the bench. "I would hate to think that could be true… if he's alive it's not, I suppose."

Nagira sipped more of his coffee. He could almost taste the chemicals they'd put in it to make it warm when it opened.

"But if he's dead, you deserve to be compensated."

"I don't need your compensation, lady," Nagira said, taking the envelope from beside him. He held it out to her.

Touko's eyes, when he met them, tucked between a hat and the collar of her jacket, were hopeful. She smiled softly when he held the envelope up to her. But she didn't take it. Standing, Touko put a pair of gloves on. Behind them, another train pulled into the station.

"I'm sure you'll find some use for it," Touko said, watching the people as they got out of the train.

Nagira frowned. "I said, I don't need it, especially if you think this was a waste of my time." He held the envelope up to her.

Touko looked down at Nagira for a moment, and her eyes were warm. "He never is, is he?" She stepped past the bench and headed over to board the train that was announcing the passenger loading.

Nagira sat on the bench for a long moment with the envelope outstretched, and then tucked it into his own jacket. He finished his coffee and got onto his own train soon as it pulled into the station.


End file.
